Editorial
Not paying salaries is a sure vote loser
Public Service Minister Muganwa Kajura has presided over a system of ghost payrolls that are now blamed for delays in workers salaries
On November 29, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Public Service wrote to all government accounting officers in regard to the delay of salaries for civil servants. The letter reads in part:
“I regret to inform you that due to unavoidable circumstances salaries for November have not been paid in time. The salaries will however, be paid by December 5”.
December 5 came and passed and when the servants who were becoming increasingly indebted to the banks and loan sharks, web confronted the ministry officials, they were told stories and advised to wait until after ‘the machines have been rectified’.
2013 ended, 2014 begun and salaries continued unpaid. Today, we are nearing mid-2014 and civil servants have not been paid salaries since January. The last time they threatened to down their tools at a meeting with parliamentarians, they questioned the wisdom of spending billions on a parking lot for MPs when monies for teachers cannot be found, and you could see clearly that the legislators were embarrassed. Shamelessly, the same parliament now wants more billions to install security gadgets around their House!
We now know that the wellbeing of citizens has never been high on this government’s agenda, but how can it explain the obscene spending that we witness everyday when the poor government workers can’t be paid what is owed to them? No wonder every where the President of the Republic goes campaigning these days, the issue of salaries is raised angrily. The sight of Ugandans fighting for Museveni’s campaign money is so humiliating it pains.
The stories of natives fighting to get on to buses every time there is a trip to the Boss’s home or office, and these stories trending on the web is really heart-wrenching. Whatever has happened, whatever is going on inside our government does not look or sound reassuring. All of a sudden the media is full of stories of angry people and widespread violence.
The story of the salaries problem being a result of ‘migration from the old payroll system to the computerized system, is a very irritating old story that workers don’t want to hear. Just tell them the truth if you have no money to pay them so that they don’t have to depend on you to feed their families, educating their children or providing health care for themselves and all those who depend on the salary earners.
Strangely all this is happening as we move towards electioneering period. Civil servants are unhappy, farmers are unhappy, the youth are angry due to unemployment, and the disgruntled politicians and poverty-stricken Ugandans regularly complain of being abandoned and betrayed. Add to these all those whose preoccupation has always been kicking the current govern out of power for them to occupy.
How does the government expect its servants, especially those with nothing to steal, to survive? Is this the stuff that makes for enviable Opinion polls? If it is, is the message to all and sundry that this is what it takes to win elections? We are just asking.
Maya Angelou, a famous poet and author once told her audience: ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’.
MPs; Who is fooling who?
Recently in a Parliamentary committee, my MP of Busiro East Hon. Medard Sseggona (pictured) really amused me when he asked his fellow MPs whether the public was not going to call them vampires for upping the parliamentary budget from 19.6b to 62.7b.
Sincerely, even if the public was too gullible, does this take a genius to see that some MPs are actually vampires! If you increase from 19 – 62 billion what is the percentage increase? And if one is allowed to ask, where is this money going to come from?
Some MPS have mooted the idea of increasing some taxes for an already burdened tax payer. Is this the way to show their voters that they really care for them?
Instead of planning programmes that can help alleviate poverty, the MPs are busy looking for how to increase their salaries, how to increase their budget, How to tax us more? etc
By the way, do you know that many of our MPs do not know how to even alleviate poverty from their own midst.
We are tempted to advise the Honourables to sell their ipads and pay the money for the extra taxes they are trying to force down our throats.
We would beg themm to begin thinking through what they advise others to do yet they cant do the same themselves.
Give us a break honourables, Sserugga Donald, Busiro South constituent
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