President Yoweri Museveni used his State of the Nation address to call on civil servants and political leaders not to demand for salary increment until the economy improves.
In a one-hour address to the 9th Parliament at Serena Conference Centre on Thursday, Museveni said that it is selfish, unfair and uncalled for, for the civil servants to demand for salary increment and allowances while the economy struggles.
The president noted that the government needs to concentrate on infrastructure, energy, health, tourism and scientific innovation before embarking on salary and allowances enhancement. He said government cannot seek to improve the lives of a few people while that of the other 34 million Ugandans is left unattended to.
Museveni says the scientists are the ones that need salary enhancement owing to their innovation. Another group of people who, according to Museveni, deserve salary increment are the district and village councilors whose work is to monitor government programmes and maintain security. He said that the 20 billion shillings per year will be earmarked for the salary increment as long as they do not create new villages and sub-counties.
Plans to increase teachers’ salaries will also go on as planned at least for the next financial year. Teachers and other civil servants have gone on strike several times demanding for better salaries.
In May, legislators in the Social Services committee threw out officials from the Ministry of Education for failing to show commitment on the issue of teachers’ salaries.
The officials led by the State Minister for Primary Education, Kamanda Bataringaya failed to explain why the teachers were not getting 30% increment as proposed by government in the last financial year budget. Government instead indicated a slight increment of between 20,000 to 40,000 shillings representing eight percent and 15 percent increment for head teachers and primary teachers respectively.
According to the budget frame work paper for 2012/2013 financial year, government has proposed 313 billion shillings for the salary enhancement of the government teaching staff. It appears that this amount would in real terms be about 30,000 shillings per teacher. For the lowest cadre teacher who earns 270,000 shillings, the pay would increase to about 300,000 shillings.
President Museveni also used the address to congratulate the Speaker and members of the East African Legislative Assembly who were sworn in early this week. Margaret Zziwa, one of the nine representatives from Uganda, was elected EALA speaker after beating another Ugandan, Dora Byamukama. While trying to conceal the divisions within his party after the EALA elections, Museveni said there was no official candidate for EALA speaker.
