The Monitor (Kampala)
Martin Ssebuyira
4 November 2009
Kampala — The Ministry of Works and Transport has retrenched 513 workers in a new move geared at streamlining the ministry to become more productive. The workers, who include engineers, mechanics, typists, drivers and support staff, were ordered to surrender all ministry property by October 31 and leave to give room to allow the new changes take effect.
"Some of the posts have been scrapped and others have been created to make the ministry more efficient and productive," Ms Suzan Kataike, the ministry public relations officer, told the Daily Monitor in an interview on October 31. Departments scrapped include the road maintenance unit. "Government is changing from an implementation body to a planning, management and monitoring body that sets guidelines and later comes out to supervise the work done," she added.
Ms Kataike said the changes didn't take the workers by surprise because they have regularly been informing them about them. She clarified that the retrenched workers are to be given their remuneration packages to start another life, but they are free to re-apply in the new sectors that have been created. "We have the planning, management and monitoring units where these people can be redeployed" Kataike said. "Those having the necessary academic transcripts that suit the available posts are to be taken up in the new posts."
According to Kataike, there are ongoing internal deployments which will allow workers with relevant academic qualifications to be promoted to different posts.
The government has since the early 1990s received funds from development partners to provide consultancy services for comprehensive restructuring of ministries, departments and agencies through a critical examination of their legal policy, institutional framework, staffing and operations.
This has enabled the identification of the embedded inconsistencies, weaknesses, duplications, performance gaps, and any environmental issues affecting performance and recommended appropriate ones that enhance achievement of the country's development goals. A consultancy firm has been hired to help streamline operations.
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