Protestants ‘eating’ most in govt

Catholics come a distant second, accounting for 760 positions (31 percent). Pentecostals placed third at 250 jobs, representing 10 percent, followed by Muslims with 231 jobs, representing 9 percent. Seventh Day Adventists trailed with only 25 jobs, accounting for one percent.

The job allocations stand at variance with national population trends, an issue which has long been the subject of social and political tensions in the country. The latest statistical abstracts from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics puts Catholics at 39 percent of Uganda’s population, forming the largest religious group, followed by the Anglicans at 32 percent. 

Muslims come third at 14 percent, while 11 percent of Ugandans are described as Pentecostals. Seventh Day Adventist adherents constitute only 1.7 percent of Uganda’s population.
An aggregation of job grades in the survey also revealed that more Anglicans, 28, occupy top positions, followed by Catholics, 20, Muslims had eight, Pentecostals three, with not a single Seventh Day Adventist in top management. 

The apparent imbalances in job distribution, which critics say contravene constitutional stipulations against discrimination, prompted the commission to recommend that there be intentional considerations in future recruitment as a measure for redress. 
Religion remains a sensitive issue in Uganda’s socio-political relations with Muslims convinced there is a deliberate policy to keep their community on the fringes. Anglicans’ dominance of leadership across almost all facets of government was only temporarily broken during the eight-year Idi Amin dictatorship. 

Save for Amin, all Ugandan presidents since independence have been Christians, with majority subscribing to the Anglican Church. This perhaps explains why Anglicans continue to dominate in the public sectors.

The report titled, Annual State on Equality Opportunities in Uganda 2022/23 said while such imbalances are uncontested, whether or not such bias is conscious and intentional, its implications for equity and/or equality are glaring. 
 
Mr Erias Lukwago, the Kampala Capital City Lord Mayor,  a Muslim, yesterday acknowledged the historical realities informing these imbalances. He referred to the religious wars of 1888 in Buganda Sub-region between Muslims and Christians, and between Catholics and Protestants which eventually fed into how modern-day Ugandan society was structured.

“If I were to resolve these issues, I would borrow a leaf from the Buganda Kingdom on how they resolved these [by ensuring] that different religions were recognised in allocation of resources,” he said.
The lord mayor thanked the Equal Opportunities Commission for shining the light on the inequalities, saying the report should provide a basis for change.

“They have done a very good job in coming up with these findings and sharing them out. However, my only problem is that key decision-makers will ignore this report. These are problems we have been grappling with all this time but the people who decide how things should be run ignore such very good reports,” he said.
Mr Joshua Kitakule, the secretary general of the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda, an umbrella body under which the main faiths meet, yesterday said he would only comment after carefully analysing the figures presented in the report.
“Well, I have just seen the figures. I need to study them before I can make useful comment,” he said.
At Old Kampala, the seat of the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council (UMSC), spokesperson Ashiraf Zziwa also blamed the current imbalances on Uganda’s colonial history, which he said deliberately denied Muslims access to education.
“This affected the Muslim community to the extent that time came when they lacked secular knowledge which could help them to get employed in professional positions for a long time,” he said. 
Mr Zziwa said because of this disadvantage, there have been deliberate efforts within the Muslim community to invest in education, building institutions of learning and pushing Muslims to take their children to school.
With UMSC lobbying for opportunities, Mr Zziwa said “the government is aware that for long Muslims have been left behind… in government sectors and institutions”.

A scholarly article by Mr Badru Musisi of the Islamic University in Uganda in 2018 said literacy and educational levels of Muslims in Uganda are far below that of their Christian counterparts, acknowledging that Muslims in Uganda and Africa have historically been marginalied in formal education.
Dr Muhammad Kiggundu, the director of communications and research at Kibuli Muslim Community, told Daily Monitor that government now has a duty to put in place an inclusive system so that all citizens can benefit.

“We do not believe that we still lack qualified people from the Muslim community…,” he said.
Mr Joseph Sewungu (Kalungu West MP) yesterday argued that the wider challenge facing Uganda today is that one region has taken advantage of President Museveni’s very long stay in power to grab jobs even where they may not necessarily be the best qualified. 
He also observed that anecdotal evidence suggests that even among those who are appointed along religious lines, majority come from the same region.

“Competence should be the first issue in recruiting people in top positions, the previous government managed to choose the best qualified people without looking out for religion or tribe,” he said.
 

What the law says

Section 6(3) of the Employment Act 2006 says discrimination in employment shall be unlawful. It defines  discrimination to mean any distinction, exclusion or preference made on the basis of race, colour, sex, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin, HIV status or disability which has the effect of nullifying or impairing the treatment of a person in employment or occupation, or of preventing an employee from obtaining any benefit under a contract of service.