Hoima City Civil Servants Miss Pay

Close to 600 civil servants of Hoima City have missed their pay for July.

In April, Parliament approved the creation of Masaka, Jinja, Mbale, Arua, Gulu, Lira, Fort Portal, Mbarara, Soroti and Hoima cities.   The other cities including Entebbe, Moroto, Nakasongola, Kabale and Wakiso will come into effect in 2023.

However, the staff of Hoima City have not received last month's salary due to the transition from the old payment system of the municipality to the new system.

A total of 620 civil servants including teachers for primary and secondary schools, tertiary institutions, health workers, staff in departments of administration, community and social development and among others have been affected.

Geoffrey Bwagi Bamanyisa, the City Town Clerk attributed the delays to integrate the details of the civil servants in the new automated payment system. He explains that the new system involves changing the codes, Bank Accounts and checking all particulars of the staff.

 

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Last month, Bamanyisa wrote to the city staff informing them about the salary delays.

“This is to bring to your attention that due to circumstances beyond our means, we are unable to pay July 2020 salaries in time. However, efforts are being made to ensure that salaries are cleared as soon as possible,” reads part of the letter.

Two weeks ago, Parliament resolved to reject a motion tabled by the Minister of State for Planning David Bahati which sought to reallocate funds in the financial year 2020/2021 budget to operationalize the newly created cities.

Last month at the inauguration of Jinja City, the Minister for Local Government, Raphael Magyezi, said the new cities will be given 1.5 billion shillings each in addition to the funds already catered for in the recently passed budgets for them under municipalities to fully operationalize.

According to some of the affected staff, they are struggling to survive due to lack of salary.

A teacher at Buswekera Primary school in Hoima West Division said she is at the verge of being evicted from her house for failure to pay rent and lacks food to feed her family.

Another teacher from Hoima Public Primary School says that he has been forced to seek support from well-wishers since he is struggling to provide for his family.