Salaries and wages board would bridge the huge pay disparities

In Summary

The salaries and wages board would determine a realistic living wage for the lowly-paid workers in government and the private sector accordingly depending on the economic realities of the country. The board would check employees, especially pseudo-investors who pay chicken-feed wages to their employees.

The head of the Civil Service and Secretary to the Cabinet, Mr John Mitala, should be the last person to shed crocodile tears in 2015 regarding the huge salary disparities in this country. An article attributed to him – Huge Salary disparities disturbing, published in the New Vision last week – was mere political rhetoric and exudes hypocrisy of a typical politician and senior civil servant unless his intended audience were Martians, not the long-suffering Ugandan public servants on this earth, who work for an equivalent of few bags of charcoal every month.

This country appears to have been cursed (observe the lies and rhetoric of our politicians who are promising heaven on earth as election campaign crowds ignorantly clap without asking for practical methodology of how these politicians will turn Uganda into the famed Orwell’s ‘sugar-candy mountain’ come 2016. They mainly clap for a bottle of Senator beer, a piece of soap or a half-kilo of sugar – imagine it is part of our contemporary political culture, which is dubbed ‘facilitation’ by politicians.

The big people, their friends and relatives live in obscene luxury as the common people in Kampala and Uganda in general live in abject poverty and are consumed by pity and complacency. Apparently, nobody cares for their plight as government-funded poverty eradication programmes have come and gone. Ugandans have become fatalistic and flock churches and mosques every Sunday and Friday respectively to seek divine intervention for their poverty and hopelessness Let me not forget the current popularity of Ugandan traditional medicine practitioners who claim to fix all problems ranging from eradicating poverty, fixing impotence and serious criminal cases, getting lovers for clients and sending candidates to Uganda Parliament come February 2016, with ease!
Does Mitala forget that some drivers in the numerous government authorities earn more than university professors? Has the big man awoken from slumber to be reminded that the salary disparity is unfair and exploitative? Cases of corruption are now rife because of the failure by government to pay a living wage and open cynicism of its servants such as the Mitalas of this world who are not only powerful in government but have capacity to ‘whisper’ to those who make bad decisions and also have capacity to lobby for their downtrodden compatriots.

What about the unfair pay to Members of Parliament who receive colossal monthly pay? I believe Mr Mitala is highly paid as a senior civil servant, has a chauffeur-driven guzzler monster of a car, and lives in one of the elite leafy suburbs in Kampala. If some Ugandans such as teachers, lecturers, nurses, doctors, police officers and many others accepted to live with poor salaries, it does not mean they are stupid; they are blinking and watching!

The solution to the discrepancies in salaries is political and economic. Once there is political will to sort it out, it will work. Let the government set up a serious independent salaries and wages board which should be free of political manipulation where Uganda Revenue Authority staff should be paid more than university professors or where Science secondary teachers should be paid more than those teaching the Arts and Humanities, subjects which are irrationally and fallaciously termed as useless by politicians who ironically took the same subjects in their formative school cycles before they ‘fell in things’, became ‘scientists’ and ill-advised President Museveni).

The argument for foreign capitalist exploiters, NGOs, government corporations and authorities to determine their own salary scales is very discriminative, unfair and dangerous for this country. Salaries should be categorised depending on qualifications and experience as it used to be in the 1960s or during the notorious regime of Idi Amin in the 1970s. During those days, especially in the 1960s, once someone had a BA degree, the salary difference in government and parastatals or private sector would not be too big. Someone would be comfortable in the bank like he/she would be as secondary school teacher. They would build a decent home, buy a small car for their family and send their children to good schools. Most of our current leaders benefitted from the sanity which existed then. Unfortunately, the rest is now historical nostalgia.

Benefits of salaries and wages board
• The salaries and wages board would determine a realistic living wage for the lowly-paid workers in government and the private sector accordingly depending on the economic realities of the country.
• The board would check employees, especially pseudo-investors who pay chicken-feed wages to their employees. Private security firms are a good example here.

• Government would save a lot of money from those who are paid ‘super-salaries’ in corporations and authorities such as Kampala Capital City Authority and could be used to improve working conditions for civil servants and provide them with a health insurance scheme
• The deliberate policy of forming the salaries and wages board would bridge the big disparity in salaries and wages, would create a sense of self confidence and self esteem among government workers and those in the private sector. It would eliminate a situation where few favoured individuals are paid exaggerated salaries and wages and where government pretends to pay and workers pretend to work.

Dr Kyaligonza is a lecturer in the East African School of Higher Education Studies and Development, College of Education and External Studies Makerere University. kyaligonzarobert@yahoo.com