2,000 health centre workers go without salary for three months

A health worker treats a pregnant woman tear gassed during the walk-to-work demonstrations. Several health workers have not been paid  

Posted  Sunday, August 25  2013 at  01:00

In Summary

Pending status. Despite getting recruited and given appointment letters, the affected health workers are yet to be confirmed by the Ministry of Public Service and get fixed on the government payroll.

in

Kampala

At least 2,000 health workers deployed in health centre III’s and IV’s have not received their salaries for more than three months, according to the Health Service Commission officials.

At the same time, Parliament was told that the Ministry of Health failed to use Shs34 billion in the last financial year and returned it to the Treasury. The financial year ended in June. Part of the 7,000 workers who were recruited at the end of 2012 by the Ministry of Health have already abandoned their workstations in search of better paying jobs because they are yet to be put on the government payroll.

“The names of these health workers have never been confirmed by the Ministry of Public Service yet they were recruited and given appointment letters. The Ministry of Finance is yet to release their salaries,” Prof Pius Okong, the chairperson of the commission told MPs on the Health Committee.

However, Mr Kenneth Mugambe, the director in charge of budgeting at the Ministry of Finance shifted the blame on the Health ministry, which he says is allocated funds to pay the health workers but its absorption capacity is low. “We admit that we have limited funding. However, the Health ministry has failed to utilise its resources properly. Last financial year, it returned Shs34 billion of a supplementary budget to the consolidated fund.

Currently, it has spent only 4 per cent of its budget in the first quarter,” Mr Mugambe said. Prof Okong warned that further delays in confirming the workers could lead to a human resource crisis in the health centres. Dr Christine Mwebesa, the commission’s deputy chairperson, advised that the Health ministry comes up with a five-year recruitment plan to cater for the declining human resource retention.