Shs 6billion Oil Bonanza: What Museveni should learn

The infamous ‘Presidential Handshake’ appears to have gone beyond the elbow, to shake the country into shock.

Whereas rewards are a powerful method for encouraging good job performance and an acknowledgement of individual or team’s effort and accomplishments in regard to a specific task or a significant contribution to a given goal, it turns out to have been the case this time round. The reward has instead created a lot of resentment, dissatisfaction, and demotivation triggering a debate around the civil service reward system.

Reading through the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) Commissioner General’s letter of 25^th June 2015 to the President, one sees everything wrong about this ‘Handshake’. To start with, the letter reflects that there is no any laid out procedure to reward exceptional performance. “Recommend an adequate reward for the Team”. In her wisdom and discretion, Akol recommended a reward of Shs 6billion and goes ahead to provide a philosophy informing her choice of reward. How she arrived at the figure and who receives what, is still a mystery.

In principle, rewards are a welcome and acceptable initiative in any organization or society. There are always instances of performance exceeding expectations like it appears to have been in this case, such instances are and should be rewarded. The only point of contention is; whereas all institutions that give rewards and bonuses have an established transparent procedure governing the administration of rewards (who should receive a reward, what kind of reward is given and under what circumstances can one be rewarded), the Akol letter to the President illustrates that the civil service appears not to have this kind of system. It was being created to serve the purpose for this particular case. For instance we know that its common practice among the armed forces to reward exception performance with ranks and promotions. Recently we witnessed Uganda Prisons reward 2012 Olympic gold medal winner, Stephen Kiprotich with a promotion following his exceptional performance for the country just as we have seen a number of soldiers gain ranks following their performance at battle fronts. In such a situation, we appreciate that there is a system that potentially can benefit all who demonstrate exceptional performance with equity.

In her latest communication to staff, Akol refers to their victory as a “massive win”, a clear indication that they are looking around for any adjective possible to justify the scandalous pay to the multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral team of officials from URA, Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development. If we had a clear system in place, why would the Commissioner General in the first place create a philosophy to the President and later on burn the mid night oil (no pun intended) in search of an adjective to justify to staff why she was paid and not them.

This ‘Handshake’ sets a very bad precedent especially that there is no known formula for bonuses or handshakes in Government. We have had several officials who have performed exceptionally well beyond their target at their stations but have not received this kind of ‘handshake’. A colleague noted that a number of recipients of the handshake already broke the norm with the traditional civil service pay scale, when it was agreed to pay them highly in recognition of their “unique skills”. Why should they in addition to the exceptional salaries they already get, look around for reasons, philosophies, vocabularies and adjectives to reward themselves for services they receive payment beyond the established civil service pay scales? Isn’t it what justified their pay in the first place?

This action and the absence of a streamlined reward system in government is likely to create (or has already created) disgruntlement, resentment and demotivation among many civil servants since it demonstrate that not all efforts can be rewarded. We are the ultimate losers as people fail to perform with dedication out of frustration of working in an environment where only a few and selected efforts that get rewarded. Alternatively people are going to seek opportunities to reward themselves as there is no procedure to determine how their effort can be described as “massive” to attract a reward or Handshake in appreciation of service.

The funds in question should be refunded and government works out a transparent process for rewards that potentially benefit all civil servants. Whereas one would have imagined that medals, issued by the Gen. Tumwine committee at national celebrations would have addressed this, the latest actions and outcry point to a need for a clear system to reward performance that exceeds expectations to motivate and create an effective method for encouraging good job performance.