The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is moving to reduce on the number of staff working for different Ugandan missions across the world.
Currently, Uganda has 35 Missions that employ between 6-10 staff. These include the Ambassador, Deputy Ambassador, Defence attaché, Deputy Defense Attaché, First Secretary Political Affairs, Second secretary commercial and diplomacy, second secretary social and Humanitarian affairs, third secretary, Financial Attaché, counsellor diaspora and consular services. Others are Administrative Attaché, drivers and House helps for the Ambassadors among others.
This means that, government is footing a lot of bills amounting to billions of shillings to facilitate the missions. And as a way of reducing on the expenditure, the Ministry has unveiled plans to start the process of re-evaluating the number of workers in Ugandan embassies abroad.
This was revealed on Thursday by the state Minister of Foreign Affairs, Henry Okello Oryem before the Foreign Affairs Committee while presenting the budget estimates for the financial year 2021/2022. Oryem said that the proposal is aimed at trimming the number of embassy staff in order to cut costs.
“We are proposing to adopt Vietnam or Cuban model where only two or three staff are deployed in embassies and consulates. If this model, which is still a proposal, is adopted, it will save Government from paying billions of Shillings. In the Vietnam model, only the Ambassador and First secretary are deployed while other staff can be on contract a driver can be hired on contract only on official duties,” he said.
Members of the committee also raised questions about why the government is still spending money on some embassies which are no longer strategic and relevant to the country.
However, Oryem said that all embassies are strategic, except that they need to assess those that can be concentrated on for economic diplomacy purposes.
“We have plans to re-evaluate Uganda’s subscription to International Agencies, in some cases, we are paying billions of monies to these organizations without any tangible benefit. We will soon generate a list of the helpful organizations and the ones we think are no longer necessary.”
The move to reduce the number of staff follows the declaration by the ministry to reduce its budget for the foreign missions and headquarters from Shs 243bn this Financial year to Shs 224bn in the coming financial year.
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