The Deputy Inspector General of Government, Raphael Baku has appealed to parliament to urgently step in and help harmonize salaries paid to staff within government departments in order to avoid loss of morale among those with less pay.
Baku and the senior staff at the Inspectorate were on Friday appearing before the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee that is scrutinizing the National Budget Framework Paper for the financial year 2012/2013 budget.
The Deputy ombudsman said that the IGG earns 18 million shillings, which is half of what the Executive Director of the Kampala City Council Authority – KCCA, Jennifer Musisi gets and far less than what the Auditor General and the Commissioner General of Uganda Revenue Authority get. Baku says this is unfair especially for the IGG who does two different functions—investigating and prosecuting cases of corruption.
Musisi currently earns 43 million shillings while the URA Commissioner General, Allen Kagina, earns about 36 million.
Baku said that knowing that an officer gets more money for the same amount of work can cause lack of morale amongst staff.
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The legislators agreed with Baku and said they would soon move to streamline the policy so that those like the IGG and staff can have their salaries increased to catch up with the others ahead.
They said the reform is urgently needed to sort out such dilemma otherwise some government departments will suffer staff flight.
The MPs said that the huge salary disparities across government departments is causing a lot of problems with the latest concerns coming from the Uganda Revenue Authority that has reportedly so far lost six senior staff to KCCA, where they got better pay.
Parliament has said it will give the Inspectorate of Government 29 billion shillings, two of which will come from the donors, out of the 34 billion that the body had requested for.
