An assistant lecturer at Makerere University, Godber Wilson Tumushabe is suing the institution demanding to be paid his salary arrears for eight years amounting to 304 million shillings.
Tumushabe says that when he was being employed as an assistant lecturer at the Human Rights and Peace Centre of Makerere University School of Law, he was granted study leave from September 2008 to purse doctoral studies at Stanford University in the United States of America.
He explains that due to financial constraints he did not complete the course, and the School of Law requested him to resume responsibilities which he did with effect from March 1, 2012. But Tumushabe alleges that since then, he has not been paid his salary because he was deleted from the payroll in 2011 without any justifiable reason.
In his affidavit before the Civil Division of High Court, Tumushabe says that he kept rendering his services until Makerere University directed the School of Law Principal to stop assigning him responsibilities.
He adds that when he continued demanding to be paid his arrears, he was reportedly charged with absconding in total disregard of the fact that he had been received back from his study leave and redeployed.
Tumushabe says that he was shocked when he was informed in a letter dated January 7, 2019 that he had been warned by the Appointments Board which decided that he should be reinstated back to work, but he shouldn’t claim for his arrears.
The lecturer of law says that efforts to challenge the decision of the Appointments Board have been futile since he lodged an appeal in the Staff Appeals Tribunal. He says his appeal was shelved from January 2019 to date.
He now wants the High Court to compel Makerere University to pay his salary arrears and also be compensated for the inconveniences caused to him.
Tumushabe is not the only person demanding salary arrears from Makerere University.
An audit report conducted by a special Human Resource Audit Committee that was appointed by the Vice Chancellor Prof Barnabas Nawangwe in 2019, released its findings in March 2020 indicating that the salary arrears demanded by 121 staff had accumulated to shillings 14.6 billion in just one year ago.
