The Uganda Episcopal Conference (UEC) has halted payments for all its employees in the Catholic Church privately-owned education institutions across the country.
The Catholic Church - through its dioceses, archdioceses and several specialized departments owns over 6,000 education institutions employing hundreds of thousands of both staff and support workers. However, a portion of them is grant-funded by the government. According to Uganda Schools guide, Catholic Church founded schools are 6,311 including 790 nursery schools, 4,998 primary schools, 519 secondary schools and 4 special needs schools.
In a letter addressed to all diocesan and archdiocesan education officers, Rev Fr Ronald Okello, the national executive secretary for education at UEC advised that given the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic, the dioceses should suspend payments of all staff in privately owned schools.
"You need to notify your staff and mutually agree on unpaid leave especially those on active contracts," says Fr Okello's letter. He adds that the education institutions should also, notify the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) and Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) to avoid penalties of statutory deductions.
Fr Okello explains that most of the churches, schools are run on charity and money paid by learners in the form of school fees whose taps have been cut off for more than four months - leaving the church with no other alternatives to keep the payroll running. He says that the decision will as well affect teachers and instructors in government-aided institutions who are not on the government payroll.
"The money, we normally get from the learners…There is no money, we cannot keep and take from what we don't have. There is no point in still paying you when the money is not there. At some of these schools, they are government-aided and so those ones government is paying salaries for their teachers. They are other teachers who are on private, they are paid on PTA. So those ones can't because it is the parents to bring this money and then they are paid. It is suspension, we're not dismissing them from work." says Fr Okello.
Before the declaration, individual dioceses like Masaka had already sent out messages indicating that they could no longer support their staff. Many of them called upon the faithful and school management committees to look out for relief in terms of food and other essential items to support the affected.
Recently, there was an exchange between private school proprietors and the ministry of Education which directed institutions not to suspend contracts of their staff and to duly pay them during the ongoing lockdown occasioned by COVID-19 pandemic.
The argument has not only been rejected by school proprietors but some legal brains who argued that it is baseless given the circumstances. However, to keep their payrolls running, private institutions under the National Private Education Institutions Association (NPEIA) have been courting the government to pay salaries for teachers in private schools for at least a year as part of the stimulus to the education sector which has been greatly hit by the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
Schools in Uganda have been closed since March this year when Uganda registered its first coronavirus case. Government has just started easing up some of the lockdown restrictions but some have lost jobs, salaries or businesses. 1,056 coronavirus cases have so far been confirmed with 1,023 recoveries.
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