Under the Ugandan Constitution, it is mandatory for every public servant to retire from service after clocking 60 years of age, and it is the same for Judges of the High Court (65 years) and Justices (70 years).
The Public Service Ministry starts notifying employees six months before their retirement age to prepare for their exit and when they clock the retirement age, the Integrated Personnel and Payroll System (IPPS) automatically deletes their names from the payroll and transfers them to the pension payroll.
To the surprise of the Public Service Ministry, some public officers write to them with the request of changing their dates of birth. The Ministry says that some do so to have their details correlate with those captured in the National Identification Register.
Another development is that once some of public officers know that they are nearing retirement, they write to the Ministry to change their dates of birth with the intention of prolonging their stay in office.
The latter development, the Ministry says, creates doubt of the intent of the officer making the request.
The Public Service Ministry is determined to make it rain on their party, as a letter written to all Permanent Secretaries, Chief Administrative Officers, Town Clerks and Heads of Government Agencies and signed by Catherine Bitarakwate, the Permanent Secretary of Public Service Ministry says that “the Ministry will continue to uphold the dates of birth a public officer declared earliest upon their initial appointment in the Public Service.”
