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Why Masaka civil servants are applying for early retirement
Kyotera District administration block. The district is among those where most civil servants are applying for early retirement. PHOTO | AMBROSE MUSASIZI
What you need to know:
- According to a source at Kyotera District, the bulk of civil servants applying for early retirement include teachers, administrators, and parish chiefs.
Various districts in Greater Masaka area are in a dilemma as several of their employees are opting for early retirement before clocking the mandatory retirement age of 60, Monitor has established.
Core to the reasons for early retirement, according to sources, is the salary discrepancies, which they say have demoralised most of the local government workers.
Since 2017, the government has been slightly increasing salaries of scientists, including science teachers, with the recent one being 300 percent salary enhancement in the Financial Year 2022/2023.
According to a source at Kyotera District, the bulk of civil servants applying for early retirement include teachers, administrators, and parish chiefs.
Mr Daniel Ssamula, who has served as the town clerk of Rakai Town Council for the past decade, is among more than 100 civil servants in Rakai District who have opted to seek early retirement.
Though most of the civil servants have decided to keep the reasons for their retirement a secret, one of the teachers revealed that they cannot continue earning allowances when they go for further studies even though the government describes this as salary.
“I am currently 50 years old with three children studying at university who need almost Shs5m per semester. I earn less than Shs500,000 per month and we are being told by the government to go back and acquire degrees, which I may personally not afford to pay for,” the Grade III teacher explainedz.
He further added that the environment in which they work as civil servants is not also conducive because their bosses rarely listen to them, especially when they are facing personal challenges.
Mr David Kawooya, the chief administrative officer of Masaka District, said many of the public servants applying for early retirement in his district are mostly teachers.
‘Many on standby’
“We are receiving a number of these (teachers) applying for early retirement and when they move out of service, we have many others out there who qualify to join and they are jobless,” he said.
According to Ms Beatrice Katushabe, the Rakai District chief administrative officer, the majority of civil servants applying for early retirement in the district do it on medical grounds.
“The rate at which our civil servants are applying for early retirement is not yet that alarming but we are trying our best to convince them to remain serving even when they meet the requirements [for early retirement],” she explained on Monday.
“It is the role of the Ministry of Public Service to approve early retirement though as a district, we simply recommend it,” she added.
The Kyotera Chief Administrative Officer, Mr Gabriel Rogers Bwayo, explained that their civil servants only need to be patient because the government has plans to increase the salaries of all civil servants soon.
The Public Service Ministry Relations Officer, Ms Lynn Ampumuza Bwiza, declined to comment on the matter, when contacted, saying she needed to first consult her superiors.
However, by press time, she had not called back nor responded to our repeated calls .
