Africa-Press – Uganda. On Monday, hours after a meeting with President Museveni, primary and secondary school teachers of arts subjects elected to end a sit down strike over discriminatory salary enhancement in favour of teachers of science subjects in government schools.
Mr Museveni said in a statement that came shortly after the meeting said the government is committed competitively remuneration of its workers. That is encouraging.
His insistence that the process will be guided by a science-led strategy that gives priority to a few. Is not very encouraging.
It is a contradiction of Objective XI (i) of the 1995 Constitution which states that “the state shall give the highest priority to the enactment of legislation establishing measures that protect and enhance the right of the people to equal opportunities in development”.
Whereas the President argues that using available resources to improve salaries across the board will not solve the salary issue, there is no evidence that an across the board enhancement that factors in inflationary pressures would lead the entire workforce into going on strike.
It is on the other hand the insistence that others “can come later” that has been leading to one strike after another. A wrong prescription informed by a misdiagnosis. Wherever government has taken care of the demands of striking members of academic staff in the universities, the nonteaching staff have often followed with a strike of their own.
Whenever medical doctors have gone on strike to demand for better pay and working conditions, nurses, midwives and other medical workers have often followed suit and; when government enhanced the salaries of teachers of science subjects, teachers of Arts followed suit and local government workers had also been set to go on strike.
In 2017 when members of the Uganda Medical Association (UMA) went on strike some government officials tabled the idea of importing 200 doctors from Cuba and the possibility of hiring retired medical workers to take their places.
Those should be testimony that short termism and a scattered gun approach to the salary issue will not put it to bed.
Government should start thinking of long-term solutions to the problem. We can consider reducing expenditure on nonproductive areas like what we spend on a huge Cabinet, a bloated parliament and the hundreds of non-essential people like Resident District Commissioners (RDCs) who are drawing salaries and allowances from the Consolidated Fund.
First and most important government should heed calls from especially the opposition and establish a salaries and remunerations commission to conduct a comprehensive review of the existing salary structures and make appropriate recommendations for implementation.
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