By Our Reporters
As top management bosses swim in extreme luxury characterized by huge pay cheque, posh vehicles and lucrative trips abroad, hundreds of junior staffers who do donkey work continue to languish in poverty having gone months without pay. All this is happening at Kololo-based National Identification & Registration Authority whose very promising younger employee Moreen Nakayi was last week crushed dead by a speeding trailer as she returned from borrowing from a friend money for transport to her work place in Kololo. Nakayi, who was buried in Mityana, was working as a Data Processing Officer (DPO) at NIRA on the Registration of Learners Project which First Lady Janet Museveni’s Education Ministry contracted NIRA to carry out. As we shall illustrate later on in this very story, there are credible fears that this all important MOES project has already been irredeemably messed up under the watch of Brig Steven Kwiringira who NIRA ED Judith Obitre Gama designated to serve as Project Manager.
Nakayi was one of the close to 1,500 young people employed as data gatherers and processors on this multi-billion project both at NIRA headquarters and in the district where data is being collected from all school-going children aged between 5 and 17 years. Slightly more than 480 DPOs are based at Kololo working on this Janet pupil registration project that is aimed at availing credible statistics with which the Education Ministry can properly plan for the education sector. Whereas the 1,000 data collectors were hired to collect data in the field (schools), the 480 DPOs at Kololo serve as Citizenship verification officers who among other things verify the consistence and accuracy of the data sent from the field. On being successfully registered, each pupil/student is issued with a NIN number which becomes the basis on which their IDs will eventually be issued when they come of age. The education minister Janet Museveni’s desire is to rely on NIN and the entire data base produced from the registration exercise to eliminate ghost pupils which has been a very big problem in the sector hemorrhaging our resources as a country.
AUDIT REPORT:
However, a recent report by the Auditor General John Muwanga revealed the extent to which resources had been squandered under the Learner Registration project including ghost procurement of 1000s of desktops and laptops that are non-existent. Whereas the DPOs are using the old laptops left during the days of Gen Aronda-supervised NSIS project, the AG report disclosed that the NIRA management had in their sham accountability claimed to have procured close to 10,000 new laptops. Indeed some of the DPOs we spoke to, during their colleague Moreen Nakayi’s funeral in Mityana, said they are using old laptops and haven’t seen any new ones being procured since the project commenced in June 2017. Whereas each of the data collection officers in the districts earns Shs450,000 per month, the DPOs earn Shs1.284m which comes to Shs930,000 after taxes. “But we have taken now three months without pay yet we work under intense pressure because, having facilitated NIRA, the Education Ministry wants their data and they are saying its long overdue because the original promise was that NIRA was experienced and would deliver by August 2017. That target failed largely because the bosses at the headquarters sidelined the old staffers of Gen Aronda whereby of the 200 old timers who applied, only 20 were given the job. The remaining 180 of the original team that started out at DPOs were new people mostly relatives and cronies of the top NIRA bosses. This has slowed down work because in the process of capturing data the officers in the districts and sub counties messed up a lot. Many Sudanese, Somalis and other refugees infiltrated the system and registered their kids. It has been our work at Kololo to re-do almost everything and as we talk now, the First Lady’s objective to have credible data isn’t going to be realized. As we validate the data from the field as DPOs at Kololo we are actually granting citizenship to these pupils but in this case we have denied more citizenships than we have granted because the data capturers in the field did such a bad job,” said one of the many disgruntled Kololo-based DPOs we spoke to for this article. The DPO furiously added that the best thing would be to forget about the billions sunk so far, cancel and begin the exercise afresh. “But they can’t do that because they ofcourse they fear to annoy the First Lady because if they do, heads will immediately roll at NIRA headquarters. They have resorted to fidgeting when they clearly know this exercise can’t be completed to beat the 15th March 2018 deadline the Education Ministry has given them. They have resorted to making us work day and night yet these are guys you haven’t paid for three months. The money itself is little and yet they don’t pay it to us. We have families to look after, rent to be paid and we must spend on transport everyday because they don’t provide anything beyond the Shs930,000 for each one of us which they aren’t even paying anymore. ”
MOREEN NAKAYI’S DEATH
The furious NIRA employee then turned to squarely blame Nakayi’s death on the indifference with which the NIRA top management treats employees. “In order to beat the 15th March deadline, they have mounted pressure on us. People are working in two shifts between 8am and 9pm and then from 10pm to 6am in the morning. People are enduring all this on empty stomachs because of fear to lose the job. We are so desperate many don’t mind working as volunteers as long as they have NIRA as their address. We are required to verify 400 applications daily because they want to beat the deadline. In Moreen’s case, a day before her death, she had verified less than 400 and pressure was too much on her to compensate for that. She had no money on her yet she was emotionally very depressed because she risked losing her slot as DPO. She feared coming late again and yet she had no money. She had been borrowing from friends until nobody could lend her anymore. On that fateful day she was knocked as she returned from borrowing from a High School friend of hers. She hailed from Kyengera and had to spend daily on transport of more than Shs10,000.” The employee furiously adds that “Even when she died in very tragic circumstances on the bypass, NIRA management wasn’t compassionate. They only gave us the company bus to Mityana. There was no official condolence message. Neither did they send any official representative at the funeral. Mourners were very bitter with the government of President Museveni yet the big man and his NRM are innocent. This is a case of bad management by NIRA bosses. It’s us the fellow poor DPOs who made individual contributions, some as little as Shs2,000 and I doubt that even in death, those guys paid her 3 months’ salary arrears.” The disgruntled NIRA DPOs have actively rejected the official explanation that they have missed salary because there is no money. “How can that happen when Learners Registration is a project? Projects can only begin when the resources have been mobilized to completion. These guys are just selfish,” ranted an employee during a lunch hour meeting some of the DPOs had with one of the youth MPs at a restaurant in Nakasero on Friday. The MP got so angry and vowed to mobilize other colleagues to call a news conference to denounce NIRA in the coming days. “We shall also see how to raise the matter on the floor of Parliament,” the MP assured the DPOs. Its further alleged that NIRA bosses showed that their idea was to access the learners registration billions from the very beginning when they fought hard to ensure the MOES released the cash directly to them as opposed to going through their mother Ministry of Internal Affairs whose PS has been actively supportive of the disgruntled staffers’ plans to strike and cause chaos at Kololo in the coming days.
M7 CADRES BITTER TOO:
Whereas there are other categories of staff who are more aggrieved having waited for their remuneration even longer, the close to 200 newly recruited NRM cadres specially trained at Kyankwanzi appear to be the most aggrieved notwithstanding that their recruitment is being disputed and is now a matter of Parliamentary scrutiny. “We joined this organization in January 2018 and our appointment letters indicate a monthly [gross] salary of Shs2.7m but it’s now coming to three months of working without pay. Nobody is explaining to us and the ED has refused to call a meeting to address this matter. We are cadres, we are revolutionaries who won’t accept this modern day slavery.
We are planning a strike during which the ED and other Directors in the top management will have to tell us where they were as we suffered and starved campaigning for the re-election of our dear President and other NRM candidates,” ranted one of the newly recruited Assistant Registration Officers based in one of the districts near Kampala. “Where do they expect us to eat from? Don’t they know how expensive life is in Kampala? The ED earns over Shs30m and she will have to tell us if there is anything Shs2.7m can do for her yet in our case they are even refusing to pay.” The NIRA bosses were unwilling to speak on record calling the matter too sensitive but they maintained that the decision by the Finance Ministry to cut NIRA’s wage bill from Shs25bn to a mere Shs15bn greatly crippled the entity’s capability to pay its staffers. “We are supposed to recruit many more officers because they did and passed the interviews but we can’t even issue appointment letters because it will only escalate our already bad salary liability situation,” said a top NIRA official who didn’t want to be quoted insisting the matter is too sensitive to the extent that even the Board is treading cautiously.
The official couldn’t deny nor confirm persistent reports that NIRA board chairman Prof Peter Kasenene got frustrated and signaled his resignation three weeks ago. “It’s something I have heard about but can’t confirm it because I haven’t talked to him personally as yet,” the NIRA official said. We are told the pressure from MPs, Ministers, Army and State House officials has been too much on the NIRA management to recruit certain people recommended to them. One youthful MP from Western region is understood to have threatened to expose ED Judith Obitre Gama’s dirty secrets on the floor of Parliament if his personal assistant can’t be employed by NIRA. The MP is quoted to have assured NIRA top officials that “the RDC job is no longer prestigious or lucrative; we are now looking at NIRA to fill that gap because it must serve the political convenience of us the NRM cadres.” For comments, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755!
