Uganda introduces daily pay for civil servants
News & Trends •
the gadgets will be installed at public facilities in 22 districts in eastern uganda piloting the scheme and the supervisors will be required to file daily reports of their supervisees attendance to opm1 the ugandan government is to introduce biometric gadgets for the implementation of daily salary payment for civil servants1 prof. ezra suruma the head of the delivery unit in the office of the prime minister opm said they are for a start installing the gadgets at public health and educational institutions to monitor clock-in clock-out of health workers and teachers at their duty stations1 suruma said salaries of absentee civil servants will be deducted equivalent to work days missed he said1 last week we were in jinja for a meeting with district local governments and we were told that some districts no longer pay civil servants who absent themselves from work1 we want other districts to follow suit because this is kisanja hakuna mchezo no playing games he said1 kaliro kayunga buvuma bulambuli bugiri and bududa districts all in eastern uganda are already implementing the scheme1 prof suruma the former finance minister and current makerere university chancellor made the comments while receiving an assortment of biometric machines donated by the british government through its overseas development arm the department for international development dfid1 the gadgets are to be introduced following the resolve of the government to start paying civil servants according to the number of days worked rather than a guaranteed monthly salary1 bureaucrats say the previous practice of registering staff presence at work manually was ineffective and susceptible to errors1 suruma said citizens dissatisfied with delivery of government services had started reporting absentee employees directly to authorities using social media platforms particularly whatsapp1 this has increased the level of community engagement in ensuring service delivery suruma said1 mr adrian green the head of growth and economic management at dfid said the equipment they donated also included laptops printers computers and their accessories1 they will be deployed for gathering processing and analysing biometric information on teachers and health workers to improve the quality of service delivery at schools and hospitals1 this is a grant worth half a million british pounds for a partnership we have been implementing with government for essential service delivery since 2015 where we have registered tremendous results mr green said1 a biometric time and attendance system is a time clock that tracks some unique physical characteristic of each employee when they clock in or out1 biometric data comes in many forms such as vascular patterns fingerprints iris patterns and voice recognition. biometrics cannot be forged1