A recent opinion piece titled “Let’s Appoint, Train New RDCs and Chief Administrative Officers,” published on September 28, 2026, by Hon. Moses Byaruhanga, Senior Presidential Advisor on Political Affairs, proposed appointing and training a completely new crop of Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs), Deputy CAOs, Resident District Commissioners (RDCs) and Deputy RDCs.
Byaruhanga argued that localised corruption, administrative laxity and unchecked staff absenteeism in local governments stem directly from leadership failures among current administrative heads.
While concerns about public sector integrity and accountability are legitimate, replacing administrative heads without reforming the underlying systems risks misdiagnosing the problem. The challenges facing local governments are also rooted in structural bottlenecks within Uganda’s decentralisation framework, fiscal constraints, central government administrative delays and institutional impediments that affect service delivery.
A sustainable solution must therefore address the systems within which local government officials operate, rather than focus exclusively on replacing personnel.
The foundations of decentralisation
Decentralisation in Uganda was operationalised through Chapter Eleven of the 1995 Constitution and the Local Governments Act (Cap 138), with the objective of transferring administrative, political and fiscal powers from the central government to subnational units.
The framework was intended to bring services closer to citizens, strengthen local democracy and accelerate socioeconomic development.
Decentralisation relies on six functional pillars, although three are particularly relevant to the current debate: political, administrative and fiscal decentralisation.
Political decentralisation empowers elected local councils to make decisions that reflect local priorities. Administrative decentralisation assigns civil servants, led by CAOs and town clerks, to implement council resolutions and central government policy guidelines. Fiscal decentralisation provides local governments with adequate and predictable revenue through intergovernmental fiscal transfers, including unconditional, conditional and equalisation grants, alongside locally generated own-source revenue.
The effectiveness of these pillars depends on whether local governments have the resources, personnel and operational flexibility required to fulfil their responsibilities.
The funding gap undermining service delivery
For local governments to provide basic education, primary healthcare, local infrastructure maintenance and agricultural extension services effectively, international and national standards dictate that at least 15 to 20 per cent of the national budget should be disbursed directly to local governments as operational and development grants.
However, allocations to local governments have historically remained at approximately 8 to 10 per cent of the national budget. Most of these allocations are pre-earmarked for salaries through wage conditional grants, leaving negligible operational funding for frontline service delivery.
This funding gap creates a fundamental mismatch between the responsibilities assigned to local governments and the resources available to execute them.
The Uganda Local Governments Association (ULGA) and the Urban Authorities Association of Uganda (UAAU) have repeatedly highlighted systemic challenges that restrict local government operations and service delivery.
One of the most significant is chronic operational underfunding. Local governments have extensive statutory responsibilities but lack basic operational budgets to inspect schools, health centres and public works.
Most transfers are either wage grants or tightly earmarked conditional grants, leaving little discretionary funding for fuel, field allowances, vehicle maintenance, monitoring visits, supervision meetings, stationery, data collection and routine follow-up.
Consequently, a district education officer may be expected to supervise dozens of schools without transport facilitation, while a district health officer remains accountable for health facility performance without adequate resources to conduct support supervision, verify staff attendance or follow up on drug stock-outs.
The resulting supervision gap can easily be mistaken for negligence.
For instance, when a classroom block is under construction in a distant subcounty, the engineering department may need repeated site visits to verify foundation depth, material quality, workmanship and completion stages before approving certificates.
If the works department lacks fuel, transport or facilitation, supervision becomes irregular, defects are detected late and contractors can exploit the weak monitoring environment.
The same applies to schools and health facilities, where absenteeism, poor record-keeping, weak inventory control and delayed reporting may persist when district authorities lack the operational resources to inspect facilities, correct deficiencies and consistently enforce standards.
Centralised procurement procedures delay projects
Public procurement delays in local governments are often not caused by unwillingness among CAOs or technical officers to implement projects. They may instead arise from the manner in which capital works are initiated, approved, financed and cleared through centrally controlled systems.
In the construction of classroom blocks, teachers’ houses, maternity wards, staff houses, outpatient departments and health centre upgrades, a local government may receive a project allocation whose use is tied to centrally issued guidelines, standard designs, conditional grant ceilings, procurement thresholds and approval requirements.
Where designs, bills of quantities, environmental screening, land documentation, procurement plans or solicitor and legal clearances require review beyond the district, implementation can lose several months before a contractor is even signed.
A district may, for example, advertise for a contractor to construct a two-classroom block or a health centre maternity ward, only for bid evaluation, contracts committee approvals, administrative review risks, delayed fund releases and late issuance of commencement instructions to push the actual works into the rainy season or the final quarter of the financial year.
Contractors may then rush the work, abandon sites, request price variations because material costs have changed or fail to complete projects before the June 30 closure of the financial year.
The consequences extend beyond delayed infrastructure. They include overcrowded classrooms, health workers operating in inadequate spaces and mothers delivering in poorly equipped facilities.
Communities may blame local governments for failures whose underlying causes are embedded in centralised procurement and financing procedures.
Staffing ceilings leave critical positions vacant
Another major challenge is the restriction on recruitment and wage expenditure.
Many district positions remain vacant because approved staffing structures do not automatically translate into permission to recruit.
Even where a district council, CAO, District Service Commission and technical departments identify critical staffing gaps, recruitment can only proceed within the wage ceiling communicated by the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (MoFPED) and the staffing establishment controls managed through the Ministry of Public Service (MoPS).
A district may therefore have vacant positions on paper but lack authority to fill them because its wage bill ceiling has not been expanded or the necessary clearance has been delayed.
The consequences are visible across local governments.
A district may construct new classrooms but lack clearance to recruit additional teachers, leaving schools with high pupil-teacher ratios and multi-grade teaching.
Similarly, a health centre may be upgraded or receive new infrastructure, but the district may be unable to recruit the required midwives, laboratory assistants, clinical officers, anaesthetic officers or records staff because the wage ceiling has not been adjusted.
Engineering departments may be expected to supervise roads, buildings, water projects and maintenance works with only one substantive engineer or works officer.
Meanwhile, internal audit, procurement, community development, natural resources and parish or subcounty administration offices may operate with skeletal staffing.
In such circumstances, weak supervision, delayed reporting, gaps in absenteeism monitoring and poor contract management are partly consequences of staffing restrictions rather than simply failures by CAOs or RDCs.
Understanding the challenges facing Universal Primary Education
Concerns about ghost learners and declining educational quality under the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme must also be examined alongside the actual level of capitation funding provided to schools.
The Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) capitation grant rate stands at Shs 20,000 per learner per year.
Dividing this amount across three school terms gives approximately Shs 6,667 per learner per term. Assuming an 80-day school term, the amount translates into approximately Shs 83 per learner per day.
Requiring a headteacher and district education department to provide learning materials, examination printing, co-curricular activities, utility bills and facility maintenance with approximately Shs 83 per pupil per day represents a severe structural funding deficit.
Verification of learner registers remains essential to eliminate fraud. However, administrative challenges in primary schools are significantly aggravated by chronic underfunding.
Recently, the operations of schools have experienced disruption following the withdrawal of complementary funding from Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs), which has supported meals and additional teaching staff.
This has worsened an already difficult situation.
PTAs have an obligation to pass resolutions supporting school activities, as has been the practice, and should continue doing so.
Nevertheless, the existence of funding challenges does not justify fraudulent practices. We condemn any practice involving ghost learners in schools.
Why unspent wage funds are returned to the Treasury
CAOs and town clerks are frequently criticised for returning unspent wage funds to the Consolidated Fund at the end of every financial year.
However, a review of public expenditure reports and policy submissions indicates that wage returns are often driven by central government procedural delays rather than local government negligence.
First, recruitment clearances are required before CAOs can recruit. Formal wage clearance and recruitment permission from the Ministry of Public Service are necessary, and approvals often take between six and nine months into a financial year.
Second, appointment processes conducted through District Service Commissions require multiple central clearances, further delaying recruitment.
Third, transitions and technical challenges involving the Human Capital Management (HCM) and Integrated Financial Management System (IFMIS) platforms can delay staff onboarding and salary payments. Technical glitches and validation delays on the HCM system managed by MoPS frequently contribute to these problems.
Consequently, funds released by MoFPED in the first quarter may remain unspent because the necessary central clearances have not been completed.
Under the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), such balances are automatically returned to the central Treasury on June 30.
The return of funds can therefore reflect administrative delays in recruitment, clearance and payroll processing rather than an unwillingness by local government accounting officers to spend available resources.
Why replacing CAOs and RDCs may not solve the problem
The proposal to replace existing CAOs and RDCs with a completely new crop of officials addresses symptoms without necessarily resolving their underlying causes.
These structural bottlenecks include rigid central wage ceilings, delayed budget releases by MoFPED, delayed recruitment approvals by MoPS and inadequate per-capita grants, including the approximately Shs 83 per pupil per day available under the UPE capitation arrangement.
Delays in the recruitment of secondary school teachers through the Education Service Commissions also contribute to unspent wage balances and widening staffing gaps, further straining local service delivery.
Replacing personnel without addressing these problems risks recreating the same cycle of administrative failure under new officeholders.
There are several additional concerns associated with wholesale replacement.
First, removing experienced accounting officers risks the loss of institutional memory and could create administrative instability across district local governments.
Second, appointing new personnel without resolving delays in central recruitment clearances, digital system glitches and operational underfunding would expose them to the same constraints faced by their predecessors.
Third, blaming local accounting officers for institutional limitations risks destabilising Uganda’s decentralised governance architecture, which has significantly expanded local infrastructure, community representation and frontline access to public services over three decades.
Finally, the approach risks disenfranchising elected leaders by limiting their participation in the governance of their localities.
These concerns do not mean that poor performance should be tolerated. Rather, they underline the need to distinguish between individual failures and systemic constraints before taking corrective action.
A more sustainable path to reform
Instead of carrying out wholesale personnel replacements in the name of administrative efficiency, public sector reform should focus on addressing the institutional weaknesses that prevent local governments from delivering services effectively.
The first priority should be harmonising the systems operated by the Ministry of Public Service, the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development and local governments.
Recruitment clearances, payroll uploads and wage releases should be automated and expedited to eliminate the forced return of unspent funds caused by administrative delays.
Second, government should review grant allocations and progressively increase intergovernmental fiscal transfers to reflect the actual operational costs of service delivery. The process should begin with primary education and basic healthcare capitation rates.
Third, systemic accountability should be strengthened rather than left to arbitrary discretion. This should include enhancing internal audit functions, local council oversight and administrative disciplinary mechanisms within established public service frameworks.
Fourth, government should institutionalise continuous capacity building by providing structured and ongoing professional development for existing CAOs, town clerks and RDCs instead of resorting to periodic recruitment purges that destabilise institutions.
Fifth, capacity building should also extend to elected leaders. District chairpersons and Local Council III leaders should receive training at the National Leadership Institute to strengthen their ideological orientation and capacity to participate effectively in local governance.
Sixth, the capacity of the current crop of CAOs, town clerks and RDCs should be assessed to identify performers and non-performers. Officials who demonstrate competence should be supported, while those whose performance falls below the required standards should be dealt with through appropriate accountability mechanisms.
Conclusion
Fighting corruption and administrative laxity is essential to Uganda’s national development. Local government officials must be held accountable for their actions, and misconduct should not be excused by the existence of institutional challenges.
However, reforms must be carefully evaluated to safeguard the structural integrity of Uganda’s decentralised service delivery model.
The performance of local governments depends not only on the competence and integrity of CAOs and RDCs but also on adequate funding, timely recruitment approvals, functional payroll systems, sufficient staffing and efficient procurement procedures.
Replacing administrators without correcting these weaknesses risks transferring the same problems to new officeholders.
True efficiency will be achieved not merely by changing the people in charge, but by reforming the fiscal, administrative and operational systems within which they work.
By the Secretary General, Uganda Local Governments Association (ULGA)
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