The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
By Joan Akello
The executive director for Ugandan Media Center, Ofwono Opondo says members of parliament outraged by a list from State House showing the highest paid staff earns Shs 96 million per month had typo errors but they also ignored the correct one.
“These errors were pointed out to parliament and each Member of Parliament also got the corrected version of the lists through emails that MPS access on their Ipads. This is to emphasize that State House, like any other government institution, has its monies appropriated by Parliament and it follows the normal Public Service Salary Scales save for a few who are appointed on a person to holder salaries.”
Linda Nabusayi, Deputy Presidential Press Secretary, said the structures that appeared in the media recently quoted annual salaries and passed them off as monthly salaries. Nabusayi and Opondo were addressing journalists at the media centre today. Minister for Presidency, Frank Tumwebaze also posted on his Facebook page saying the technical staff had already detected the typo errors and an addendum to that effect had already been sent to the clerk of Parliament and on official parliamentary emails of all Members of parliament correcting the error.
However, Tumwebaze adds that: “Yesterday July 8, 2014 afternoon Hon Cecilia Ogwal raised a concern in Parliament that some staff in Office of the President earn 96m a month as salary. She was quoting figures from the ministerial budget policy statement of the Presidency. And Hon Ogwal knew that this correction had been made but chose to only dramatize it to make a political point.”
Ofwono added that the error occurred during the process of uploading the spread sheets into the OBT database of the excel sheets but says the mistake does not call for any disciplinary action for the officer in charge.
“It was not willful misinformation. In any case July salaries have not been paid,” Ofwono said and in a bid to lighten the tensed atmosphere added, “I am sure many of you (journalists) were itching to work in State House.”
For the financial year 2014/15, State House will spend Shs 10 billion on wages, up by 44.9percent from Shs 6.9 billion in 2014/15 while in the same period in review, presidential donations will increase to 90.6biilion from Shs 80.6 billion and Shs 36 billion from Shs 18 billion for classified expenditure.
