The government has frozen the hiring of new officials in the central and local governments, pending the completion of the ongoing merger of their agencies and departments.
The moratorium applies to 23 ministries, four service commissions, 72 agencies and departments not affected by the merger and 148 local governments; 137 districts and 11 cities, including Kampala.
Officially dubbed the Rationalisation of Government and Public Expenditure (RJOBsNewsEX), the government hopes the planned changes, which have been intermittent in their decisions, will save it up to Sh1 trillion a year.
Ms Catherine Bitarakwate, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Public Service, in a June 21 circular to all permanent secretaries, chief executives of parastatal bodies, commission secretaries, administrative directors and municipal secretaries, noted that the hiring freeze is aimed at “retaining and absorbing as many staff as possible” from the merged entities.
“The Ministry of Public Administration is aware that the structures of government institutions are currently occupied on average up to 68 percent, which indicates the presence of vacant posts that can accommodate the affected staff within the framework of the rationalization of government and public spending,” wrote the PS.
He added: “It is important to note that the government has no intention of losing the experience, knowledge and expertise of the staff of the affected ministries and agencies.”
Ms Bitarakwate noted that the freeze does not, however, affect ongoing recruitment and that “filling critical vacancies” outside RJOBsNewsEX “will be managed on a case-by-case basis following consultations” with her ministry.
“Vacant positions filled during this period will only be staffed by agencies affected by RJOBsNewsEX.”
The circular came a day after Ms Bitarakwate wrote on June 20 to 22 heads of parastatals and agencies ordering them to “desist from recruiting new staff” and only renew contracts that expire up to December 30, 2024 in consultation with her ministry and the Attorney General’s office.
The directive applies to agencies that Parliament recently voted to keep as semi-autonomous institutions and to 16 others whose fate is yet to be determined.
Lawmakers in different votes since late February have retained seven parastatals including the Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA), the National Information Technology Authority-Uganda (NITA-U), the Dairy Development Authority (DDA), the Cotton Development Organisation (CDO), the National Forestry Authority (NFA), the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) and the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADs).
Nineteen agencies and departments have been merged so far, including the Agricultural Chemicals Board, the Uganda Trypanosomiasis Control Board, the Uganda National Meteorological Authority, the National Physical Planning Board and the National Population Council.
ICT Minister Dr Chris Baryomunsi, who is the government spokesperson, told this newspaper last week that Cabinet had rejected the retention of the seven parastatals and ordered that repeal bills addressing MPs’ concerns be reintroduced to Parliament.
According to Ms Bitarakwate’s letter, only 32 per cent of government positions are unfilled, a figure that is contrary to the findings of the Auditor General’s (AG) latest report for the financial year ending June 2023.
The report published last December and presented to Parliament in January details that 60,847 of the 133,670 approved posts in 75 MDAs and 167 local governments have been vacant for more than two years.
Local government records show that Uganda has 135 districts and 11 cities, making a total of 146. We were unable to establish the range of local governments captured by the auditors.
Outgoing Attorney General John Muwanga said staff shortages had a negative impact on service delivery as they “lead to reduced efficiency… increased workload for existing staff (and) poor quality service delivery.”
The report details that the staff shortage has been felt most in the health and education sectors. Other entities affected by staff shortages include the Office of the President and the Ministry of ICT.
“Existing human resource management practices and measures are not sufficient to facilitate the delivery of quality healthcare services by health professionals in specialized, national and regional referral public health facilities in Uganda,” the auditors noted.
Mr. Phillip Asavia, spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Service, told this newspaper last night that together with the Attorney General, they carried out a new (re)validation of all government employees.
A final report on the validation, which was completed last week, is pending.
“Yes, the Attorney General conducted the validation, but many employees were not caught for one reason or another. Some were sick and did not show up for the validation exercise, others were missing documents and some were new to the job,” Asavia said.
He added: “According to what the Attorney General presented, many (employees) were removed from the payroll and yet they are government employees. Therefore, the Ministry (of Public Service) working with the Attorney General had to conduct another exercise… It is the report of that exercise that will show us the number of employees.”
However, U.S. Attorney General reports over the past 10 years have put the number of vacant positions in both central and local governments at around 60,000, due to advice from the Finance Ministry to freeze hiring, citing a bloated wage bill.
Authorities are investigating reports of a bottleneck in personnel management in the government due to an increasing number of employees due to retire and requesting to adjust their birth dates to lower their ages.
The plan to merge government agencies was first considered in 2018. Accordingly, the Ministry of Public Service recommended to Cabinet that out of the 157 agencies reviewed, 80 should be retained as semi-autonomous agencies, 33 agencies should have their mandate and functions integrated into their parent ministries and 35 agencies should be consolidated or merged into 19 entities.
In 2022, the Cabinet gave the go-ahead, making the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), which was reincorporated into the Ministry of Energy, the guinea pig.
Several stakeholders, including Parliament, raised concerns about the merger, but an ad hoc parliamentary committee, in its report published in February 2022, gave the green light to the merger proposal.
The reason? Duplicated mandates, functional ambiguities reflecting a confusion between policies, regulations and implementation, unharmonized legal frameworks within which some agencies operate, and bloated structures of some agencies that are not aligned with their mandates.
There are 157 public agencies and 22 ministries, in addition to the offices of the President and the Prime Minister.
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