KCCA to regularize 1000 staff on temporary contracts

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Kampala Capital City Authority-KCCA has submitted a list of names of their staff on temporary contracts to the Public Service Commission for assessment and recruitment.

This follows a verification exercise conducted in August to determine the status of employee contract, their qualifications and competencies.

With over 1,500 staff, KCCA has over 1,000 staff working on renewable short term contracts of four months contrary to the KCCA Act.

The practice was adopted during Jennifer Musisi’s tenure at the City Hall. In 2013, the Public Service Commission tried to recruit 280 employees to take up positions at KCCA but the then Executive Director Jennifer Musisi assigned only 45 people arguing that KCCA could not pay the recruited staff.

However, in a contrary move, she employed people to fill the same positions earning as much as they would as permanent staff.

Now, the new KCCA Executive Director Dorothy Kisaka says only 450 of their staff are deployed according to Public Service guidelines.

She says the verification exercise revealed disparities in staff recruitment resulting from staff being recruited by different people. She says now they have moved to correct the anomaly, but added that no qualifying candidates shall lose their jobs.

According to the KCCA Act, with exception of staff appointed by the president, all KCCA staff are supposed to be recruited through Public Service Commission, the Health Service Commission or the Education Service Commission depending on the position available.

The Director Administration and Human Resource Management Grace Akullo say that following the staff verification exercise, they have submitted names of employees to the Public Service Commission for recruitment on a permanent basis.

Akullo says that with this arrangement, they will have all qualifying candidates take up positions on permanent contract adding that short term contracts are demotivating to staff as they are kept in suspense always.

Akullo says that they shall use the money the authority was paying temporary staff and their wage bill to pay the staff they intend to recruit.

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