Bugweri to delete civil servants seeking census jobs from Ubos list

The Bugweri District Chief Administrative Officer, Mr Anthony Martin Lukwago, says any civil servant who will be offered temporary employment by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) during the forthcoming Uganda National Population and Housing Census will have their names deleted from the list.

Ubos last month started recruiting over 100,000 people ahead of the national census slated for May 10 for ten days.
The jobs include 18,483 census supervisors, and 114, 460 census enumerators, bringing the total number of jobs to 132,943.

But following the Ubos pronouncement, there has been an outcry from LC1 chairpersons in Bugweri District that educated, but jobless locals, who were recommended for such jobs, were reportedly left out for interviews in favour of civil servants.
The village leaders, through their association chairperson Mr Yusuf Sonko Maganda, said the exercise is likely to be affected if already employed civil servants are added extra duties.

“These civil servants are already busy in their offices, so sending them to count people in villages is a miscalculation,’’ Mr Maganda said on Wednesday.
He added that it will be “unfair” for Ubos to employ people who already have legitimate jobs yet there are many unemployed citizens.
The Ibulanku sub-county LC3 chairman, Mr Ibrahim Ndoga, said the village chairpersons’ complaints cut across every sub-county.
He said: “What those people are saying is true because my colleagues in Igombe and Buyanga sub-counties have been telling me the same. I am not surprised with this news because to even become a civil servant in my district, you must be rich enough to be able to “buy” a job.”

Mr Lukwago, however, said he was unaware that civil servants had applied and were interviewed for roles of supervisors and enumerators since applications were sent to Kampala, but promised to “act accordingly”.
“I will ensure that those given those jobs are deleted from that (Ubos) list to create opportunities for the jobless,’’ Mr Lukwago said, adding that civil servants were not meant to apply for those since there are many unemployed people.

Monitor has established that many civil servants in different Local Governments reportedly manipulated the system and made their way to lists of those who have passed the interviews.
This was because the interviews were being handled by senior officials in Local Governments, some of whom they were close to.
The Ubos Deputy Executive Director, Mr Godfrey Nabongo, however, said there was nothing wrong with civil servants being temporarily taken on as supervisors and enumerators because “the call for applications was open”.

“We placed an open advertisement seeking applicants for these jobs; therefore, whoever possessed minimum qualifications was eligible to get it,” he said.
He, however, defended Mr Lukwago’s decision to recall the appointment of civil servants to such jobs, especially if they did not seek his attention as their head.
Mr Nabongo further explained that it was irregular for a civil servant to get another government appointment without resigning or seeking leave from the current job, adding that despite these emerging issues, the exercise will go on smoothly.