After payroll clear out, Uganda to downsize civil service

Following the deletion last month of some 5000 names of civil servants off the government payroll, local media in Uganda are hinting of further downsizing of the civil service.

The president, Yoweri Museveni, is reported by the Daily Monitor portal to have tasked a former finance minister to lead a study on the bloated public service and associated wage bill and to subsequently recommend appropriate action to be taken.

The President, who has dubbed his new tenure as “Kisanja hakuna mchezo”, meaning a term of not playing games, has reportedly rejected the higher salary demands by a section of the civil service and instead proposed that the wage bill is already unsustainable and the numbers of civil servants be slashed, the news portal further reported.

Museveni has been in a cabinet retreat with leading members of the civil service where he has been delivering lectures on ways to transform the civil service and to revolutionize the country.

In a presentation titled, ‘‘Fast Tracking Industrialization and Socio-Economic Transformation,’‘ he outlined 16 ways through which his government could achieve a booming and bustling economy within the current global economic milieu.

My paper at the ongoing government retreat at Kyankwanzi today focused on fast-tracking Uganda's industrialisation. pic.twitter.com/hnSpkpdu81

— Yoweri K Museveni (@KagutaMuseveni) July 28, 2016

Among others, to consolidate infrastructure efforts in the country, and to in his words, ‘‘Be careful with the wage policy. We should not make the mistake of prematurely overpricing our labour (salaries and wages) so that companies run away from paying high wages.’‘

He also touched on investment in industrial parks, doing away with subversive tax policies that chase out investors and banishing corruption ‘‘so that the parasites that increase the cost of investors are eliminated.’‘

Last month, particulars of about 5,000 civil servants were deleted from the payroll in a clean up exercise. Uganda currently has some 300,000 employed, with an additional 10,830 pending validation, according to the Public Service ministry records.