Kampala. At least 24,319 teachers have been deleted from the payroll, provoking head-teachers’ protest that they and their teachers are getting struck off the payroll every month without explanation thus, crippling delivery of education services in schools.
Mr Martine Okiria Obore, the chairperson of Association of Secondary School Headteachers of Uganda (ASSHU), yesterday said most local governments have failed to justify why teachers and their supervisors are being deleted from the payroll.
“Whereas a one-time error is understandable, deletion from payroll has become frequent for both teachers and head-teachers. Getting back to payroll is an uphill task, time wasting, diversionary, and its frustrating effects cause inefficiencies in service delivery in our schools,” Mr Obore said.
He asked the Ministry of Education to work with Public Service and the principal human resource officers of the district local governments to address the problem urgently. He said this has affected performance as many deleted teaching staff are spending more time at district offices pursuing reinstatement than teaching.
“Local governments don’t have any valid reasons for deleting staff. It is very frustrating. It takes a teacher not less than six months to get back. All this time they are working between the school and district offices which is psychologically disturbing and one can’t concentrate in class,” Mr Obore said.
Mr Zadock Tumuhimbise, the Uganda National Teachers’ Union (Unatu) chairperson, said every month they receive between 15,000 to 20,000 complaints of teachers who have been deleted off the payroll.
He said the numbers fluctuate every month as some teachers are reinstated on the payroll and others are deleted.
“Once a teacher is not on payroll, it affects his way of working and attending to the learners’ needs and his family. It impacts on the overall quality of teaching and we have been lamenting on the performance,” Mr Tumuhimbise said in an interview yesterday.
He added: “Our research shows erroneous deletions as a result of people in the system especially the human resource. They create many units of power with people who don’t have the competence in managing the payroll. The teachers and their learners become victims. There are variations from month to month. On average, we get complaints of 15,000 teachers who have not received their salaries because they have been deleted without explanation.
There are some months where we register 20,000 teachers erroneously removed from the payroll.”
The Unatu general secretary Mr Phillip Duluga, said by December 2018, at least 24,319 teachers had been deleted from the payroll.
He said in July last year up to 30,000 teachers were deleted from the payroll.
Mr Patrick Muinda, the Ministry of Education spokesperson, yesterday said they will request districts to submit lists of the affected teachers before asking Public Service to investigate the matter.
“The ministry (Education) will look into this matter by, first of all, requesting each district to make submissions of the list of all affected teachers.
The ministry will then make a submission to Ministry of Public Service to investigate this matter and to conclusively resolve it,” Mr Muinda said.
