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Govt salaries delay again
A teacher (R), conducts lessons under a tree in Ntoroko District recently. PHOTO/RUTH KATUSABE
What you need to know:
- Officials blame the delay on a system upgrade.
Public servants across the country have to wait until next week to receive their July salaries, the Ministry of Public Service has said, adding to a recurring trend of delayed salaries.
The delays were announced in a July 29 memo to all ministries, departments and agencies, public universities and pensioners, where salaries expected on July 28 will likely be accessible on August 6.
Ms Catherine Bitarakwate, the permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Public Service, told journalists in Kampala yesterday, the delays were caused by an upgrade in the payment systems.
The Ministry of Public Service, together with the Ministry of Finance, successfully completed the system upgrade on July 26, just two days shy of the payment of salaries, and subsequently validated the payroll transfers, and this was completed on July 29.
“As I speak, already 46 votes are in the process of being paid, and for the others which are being supported to complete the new arrangement, we expect that by Tuesday all salaries should be in. So, the delay that has been occasioned is just about seven days,” she said.
She added: “…this month being the first month of the financial year, there are a number of upgrades that we have been undertaking, specifically on the Human Capital Management System and the Integrated Financial Management System, where we are making improvements to create a more seamless flow of information between the two systems.”
Ms Bitarakwate further explained that the system upgrades are aimed at streamlining the management of the payroll.
“This has been aimed at ensuring automatic validation controls of payroll invoices to guarantee accuracy of financial coding blocks, which combines the supplier numbers, those numbers peculiar to one individual, IDs and payroll categories,” she added.
Efforts to reach some representatives of the affected, including the Uganda National Teachers’ Union and the Uganda Medical Association were unsuccessful by press time.
But this is not the first time a salary delay has hit civil servants. In May 2022, the ministry announced delayed salaries also attributed to a system upgrade and in July of the same year, the ministry attributed the delays to delayed issuance of the salary structure.
In January last year, the Minister of State for General Duties at the Ministry of Finance, Mr Henry Musasizi, told Parliament that the ministry would investigate the recurring delays, following multiple complaints.
Yesterday, Mr Jim Mugunga, the spokesperson at the Ministry of Finance, assured all workers of the availability of the salaries.
Finance on July 16 announced the release of Shs5.8t for quarter one expenses. Of this, Shs1.9b is for wages and Shs323.5b for pension and gratuity.
Ms Bitarakwate yesterday pledged there would be no more delays after the automation.
Efforts
Government has been attempting to clean its payroll, weed out ghost workers, and stop hemorrhage of resources. The sal-ary forensic audit for the financial year ending June 2022 unearthed irregularities in the management of the payroll, includ-ing over payments, underpayments and illegal access and deductions. These in that year alone cost taxpayers more than Shs80 million in illegal or questionable payments to district and local government workers.
Consequently, the Office of the Auditor General last year conducted a head count census of all gov-ernment workers.
