ESTABLISH A SALARIES COMMISSION URGENTLY

ESTABLISH A SALARY COMMISSION URGENTLY

When a senior medical doctor dreams of applying for a job to become a driver to the KCCA’s Executive Director, you do not need a space scientist to illustrate to you how the teachers’ strike is not really about the teachers pay. In the larger part, the teachers’ strike is and should be treated as a symptom of consequences of glaring disparities in salary structures in this country. The issue is not the availability of money in government coffers but rather the unfair imbalance in salary structures being compounded by unprecedented skyrocketing inflation. While others are handed blank cheques to blast away, others are condemned for demanding a meager increment in rather disappointingly, the understandable language: strike.      

We must find a credible solution which is better than just raising salaries in the proposed three year phase. Further, we must ensure that our economy doesn’t become a victim while at it because then, the money will be of less value thereby not solving the problem.

In 2010, Prof Augustus Nuwagaba while on contract from the Ministry of Public Service to develop a policy paper for the transformation of the Uganda public service, among other key recommendations; he proposed the establishment of a salaries commission with a specific objective of streamlining the salary structure in the country. What happened to this great idea? Does it also need billions like the university student loan scheme and other wonderful programs to be implemented? Or is it just a case of corn expecting justice from a court composed of chickens?

Of course, the operationalisation of an independent salaries commission is not in everyone’s interest. There will be losers and winners. However, we need to look at the greater common good. It is the only way we can restore not only order in public service salary disparities but also the zeal to deliver quality service which is now deadened.

Putting the crisis in context; going by the press reports, the driver to the Executive Director of KCCA earns in one month what a primary school teacher earns in around 25 months while a member of parliament earns in a single month without other allowances what a primary teacher earns in 47 months. At the end of the day, they all go shopping at the same market. This is shameless and despicable.

The government is proposing alternative ways of resolving teachers’ grievousness along side salary increment such as funding a teachers’ cooperative and building teachers’ staff quarters on grounds that these are one-off expenditures as compared to monthly salaries. Whereas these are viable options and infact brilliant, emphasis needs to be placed on the urgency of the establishment and operationalising an independent and transparent salaries commission as soon as possible. The beauty of such a commission is that the available resources in the economy will be equitably shared basing on academic, experience, and other valuable criteria. 

Among the guidelines in the new-look salary structure which the commission would come up with, we would have measures such as no government employee should earn more than 12 times what the lowest paid employee earns in a single month. To put it in another way, if the lowest paid employee earns let’s say UGX: 500,000/= per month, then the highest paid employee should not exceed UGX: 6,000,000/=. In addition to this pay, they would then receive modest benefits and allowances which are strictly relevant to their specific duties and prevailing economic circumstances.

The government can order employees to their respective work stations at best but cannot force them to deliver quality service and needless to add, such a nation can then forget about development. We need to stop playing hard expecting things to get better because that is a place for optimists. We need to be realistic and start acting now to avert the looming multi-sectoral strikes, worse inflation, and possible result of famine.