By Paul Kubeka –
East African Community’s legislative assembly closed the appointment of House clerks this week, citing anomalies in the recruitment process, bringing a decade-long conflict over the distribution of employment in the bloc’s organs to a climax.
The East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) in Arusha engaged in cat-and-mouse games over the employment of a clerk and a deputy, signaling simmering displeasure with the Community’s staffing ratios.
Ugandan parliamentarians, led by Denis Namara, have been in the forefront of the fight for equal pay in staff recruitment, staging spectacular walkouts that forced Speaker Martin Ngoga to call a halt to the session on Tuesday.
The Eala started sittings in Arusha on October 3 and are expected to run until October 20.
The EAC Secretariat, early this year, advertised at least 60 vacant positions whose filling has unveiled bad blood and unhealthy competition among the six partner states.
An extraordinary Council of Ministers meeting scheduled for last Wednesday, which was expected to finalise the staff recruitment process, had to be moved to a later date, perhaps in the next week, at the prompting of Uganda’s EAC Affairs Minister Rebecca Kadaga, who had reportedly travelled.