Uganda’s Daily Monitor reports that the country’s President Yoweri Museveni has proposed reducing the number of civil servants in an effort to cut costs and improve service delivery. The president had instructed former finance minister Ezra Suruma to analyse the inflated public service wage bill and recommend cost cutting measures.
Museveni relayed his plans at a Cabinet meeting in Kyankwanzi on Sunday night saying that the current wage bill was unsustainable. This move has been seen by many political analysts as a bad move for many Ugandans who heavily depend on their relatives employed as civil servants.
The president was reacting to demands for a salary hike, made at a meeting of permanent secretaries. They claimed their Sh3 million annual salary (about R412 000) was inadequate, as they were responsible for budgets running into trillions of shillings.
Museveni rejected this and said, by reducing the number of civil servants, the government could use the savings to achieve social and economic transformation. Read more on this here.