Warning: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool in /usr/www/users/urnnet/a/story.php on line 43 Government Regrets Error in State House Salaries :: Uganda Radionetwork
Government says the pages containing the staff lists for the State House vote inadvertently indicated the total annual salary in the columns for monthly salary leading to exaggerated wage figures indicating a variance of over Ugx 84bn.
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The Government has come out to clear the air over reports that State House staffs earn exorbitant amounts of money. The figures which appeared in the ministerial policy statement for the office of the president indicated that some employees in state house earn up to Ugx 96 Million per month, an anomaly which pushed the departments wage bill to Ugx 174billion.
But government says the pages containing the staff lists for the State House vote inadvertently indicated the total annual salary in the columns for monthly salary leading to exaggerated wage figures indicating a variance of over Ugx 84bn.
State House wage expenditure stood at Ugx 6Billion in FY 2012/13. It rose to Ugx 6.9billion in FY 2013/14 while it is anticipated to increase to Ugx 10Billion in 2014/15.
Frank Tumwebaze, the Minister for the Presidency confirms that a fault was made during the process of uploading the spreadsheets into the Output budgeting tool data base. The errors were thereafter pointed out to Parliament in an official communication dated July 1st, 2014 and received by the clerk to parliament in July 3rd, 2014.
Tumwebaze explains that legislators were also given the corrected version of the lists through e-mails long before they raised the matter in parliament.
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Tumwebaze adds that their staffs have been cautioned, but this was a regrettable error.
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In an interview with Uganda Radio Network, Col Fred Mwesigye, the chairperson Presidential Affairs committee of parliament says all MPs got the correct information on their Ipads before the plenary session, in which the matter was first raised.
The Nyabushozi County MP adds that he tried to alert Members of Parliament about the statement, but was not allowed to do so. Instead Speaker Rebecca Kadaga asked him to send the message through their Ipads. Col Mwesigye faults Dokolo Woman MP Cecilia Ogwal for hoodwinking the public despite knowing the truth.
Halima Athumani
Freelancer