Effectiveness of the Public Payroll Decentralization Reforms in Uganda

This study examines the extent to which the decentralisation of payroll management and salary processing has achieved its intended objectives. Findings reveal that there has been remarkable improvement in the key indicators of measuring efficiency, that is: increased awareness by teachers of the new mechanisms of the reform (95 percent), significant reductions in cases reporting of missing salaries (3.6 percentage point improvement) and reduction in cases reporting over payment. Furthermore, incidences of salary arrears have declined since the reform was introduced to 16 percent from 23 percent before the reform. Less teachers are being erroneously deleted from the payroll, from 11 percent prior to the reform to 4 percent after its introduction. The reform has enabled teachers to correct errors and omissions related to their salaries much faster (from 65 percent to 59 percent before and after the reform respectively. However, challenges of travelling long distances to districts, corruption at district level, and high absenteeism of district officials still impede the process of reporting and correcting errors