RDC convenes meeting over 197 staff salary saga

The Bugweri Resident District Commissioner (RDC) is expected to meet 197 staff of the district local government to resolve a week-long impasse between them and the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), Mr Nelson Kirenda.

Last week,  Mr Kirenda wrote to the district education officer (DEO), Mr George Tigawalana, seeking to recover about Shs150m, which was erroneously overpaid to 197 staff, mainly teachers, according to a report from the Auditor General.

“This serves to inform you that the Auditor General, in his report for 2021/2022, indicated that there were a number of staff in your department who were overpaid salaries. Upon verification, it was discovered that the automation of salary arrears for these staff was done by the Ministry of Public Service,” Mr Kirenda’s February 14 letter reads in part.

Mr Kirenda instructed the human resource officer to immediately institute a salary recovery code against each of the staff and inform them accordingly.

The notice was sent out to the affected staff on Friday last week, with Mr Kirenda advising teachers who dispute the money to write back with evidence of a bank statement for that period.

A teacher of Nkutu Memorial Senior Secondary School, who declined to be named and is required to refund Shs790,000, said she went to the human resource officer on Tuesday and was told to produce her bank statement for 36 months.

“A bank statement for 36 months is Shs540,000; I thought if someone was overpaid in a particular month, then the human resource or CAO should identify those specific months for each individual so that the statements are for only those months where the queries are,” she said.

Most teachers are against producing bank statements for 36 months, considering that about 40 of them are supposed to refund less than Shs500,000. Mr Chrysostom Mukama, a laboratory attendant at Nkuutu Memorial Secondary School, has the least recovery of Shs1.

Their efforts to print out statements for only the months in question have reportedly been rebuffed by authorities.

However, on Tuesday, the office of the CAO wrote to the DEO, Mr George Tigawalana, requesting him to mobilise all teachers referred to in the CAO’s February 14 communication concerning overpayment of salaries for a meeting on Friday at the district council hall starting at 9am.

Ms Mary Shyla Baraza, a teacher at Nkuutu Memorial Secondary School, from whom they are going to recover Shs913,000, said on Tuesday she went to the district headquarters to meet the officials but they were not there.

Probe
In October last year, Mr Kirenda directed the Bugweri District police commander to investigate 13 Arts secondary school teachers over suspected irregularities in the enhanced salaries.

The anomalies reportedly saw some teachers’ payslips altered to match salaries of their science counterparts, which were recently enhanced to Shs4m. Arts teachers earn about Shs800,000 per month.