An Enhanced Salary's Influence on Improved Public Service Delivery: A Case study of the Office of the Auditor General, Uganda

Abstract

Like any other developing country, Uganda today is plagued by poor public service delivery. This has not always been the case as in the 1960s her public service was branded as one of the best in sub Saharan Africa. This study was born out of the teachers numerous strikes in agitation for increased salary to provide better services and the Governments failure to uphold the agreed on increments, with the claim of not having the resources, but still demanding better services. This was extended to the entire public service and hence the topic An enhanced salarys influence on improved public service delivery: The case of the Office of the Auditor General, Uganda.

From 4th October 2008 with the enactment of the National Audit Act, 2008, the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) became an autonomous public agency and left the mainstream public service. This entailed meaningful autonomy in the management of her human resources, budgetary process and other resources. Key to this was the enhancement of the salaries of her staff for purposes of motivating them to produce expected results.

Through the case study, it was established that her performance after 2008 greatly improved compared to the earlier period when she was still part of the mainstream public service which has incidentally remained with those problems and more.

However, by considering the massive hemorrhage of government resources through corrupt tendencies and in this instance from only the payroll management related areas of the ghost workers phenomenon in salary and pension as well as the bloated structure, if these were appropriately handled they would generate savings and contribute resources to enhance the salary of public servants. Also discovered was a serious distortion in salaries paid to public servants.

In conclusion it was observed that an enhanced salary contributes to improved public service delivery and all efforts should be made by the Government to find the necessary resources and address the issue. Policy recommendations ranged from the actual increment of salaries and government meeting its own targets set to effectively fighting corruption, capping the haphazard increase of the public service and harmonization of the salaries across the public service.