The Journal of African & Asian Local Government Studies

Human Resource Management in Local Governments: An

analysis of Recruitment and Selection Practices in Uganda

Lazarus Nabaho & Alfred Kiiza, Uganda Management Institute, Kampala, Uganda
[email protected]/ [email protected]; [email protected]

Abstract
The transfer of staff hiring and firing decisions from the central government to the
district local governments 1through the District Service Commissions (DSCs) is
considered to be one of the cornerstones of the Ugandan decentralization reforms.
Architects of Uganda's decentralization policy opted for a separate personnel system
because it increases responsiveness, enhances accountability of civil servants to
elected leaders, and overcomes the challenge of dual allegiance by civil servants to
central and local government masters. However, the decentralization of civil service
management has come along with unintended or perverse effects. One such effect is
sacrificing merit by the DSCs during recruitment and selection processes. In this
paper, we argue that the legal framework for appointing the DSC and the defacto
local eligibility criteria for appointment to the DSC; the size and ethnic composition of
district local governments; and the tendency to associate districts with employment
for indigenes are some of the key obstacles to merit-based recruitment and selection in
local governments in Uganda.

Key words: Human resource management, local governments, Uganda

1. Introduction
This paper identifies and discusses key factors that militate against merit-
based recruitment and selection in the local government civil service in Uganda. The
paper is based on data collected from face-to-face interviews that were conducted with
three Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs) in March 2010. The three CAOs were
selected owing to their wealth of experience with Uganda's decentralized system of
governance. They had worked in several districts in various capacities prior to
recentralization of the appointment of CAOs in 2005 and in at least two districts
following recentralization of the appointment of CAOs. They were therefore able to
give perspectives that were beyond their current duty stations. Secondary data was
collected from journal articles, dissertations, and administrative reports. Data from

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 Nabaho & Kiiza • Human Resource Management
interviews and secondary sources were analyzed using thematic and content analysis
methods.
2. Background
Over the past decades, decentralization has become a worldwide trend
(Loffler, 2003; Sharma, 2005). The wave of decentralization gathered momentum in
Africa from the early 1980s with several African states expending substantial
resources on political and administrative decentralization (Crook & Manor, 1998;
Wunsch, 2001; Sharma, 2005; Bardhan and Mookherjee, 2006). In Uganda, the
decentralization policy was launched in October 1992 with the first 13 pilot districts
(Kakumba, 2008). The Local Government (Resistance Councils) Statute, 1993 was
enacted with a view to giving a firm legal basis for the decentralization policy reform.
In 1995-following the promulgation of a new Constitution-the decentralization policy
was rolled out to the entire country. The Constitution empowered local governments
as focal points in managing development and social service delivery (Nsibambi,
1998). Under Uganda's decentralization legal framework, the district is the highest
level of local government and below it are lower local governments (municipalities,
city divisions, town councils and sub-counties). The key political organ at each level is
the council, which includes directly elected members and members that represent
specific groups, namely: women, youth, and persons with disabilities. Each local
government was designated a legal entity with delineated power to raise taxes and
provide basic services (Manyak & Katono, 2010). The district council is the highest
political organ of local government and comprises the District Chairperson as the
political head plus a number of councilors representing electoral areas of the district
and interest groups.

3. Current recruitment and selection practices in Local Governments

Uganda's decentralization experience is generally considered a success story
in terms of its extent and impact (Ndegwa & Levy, 2003). The transfer of staff hiring
and firing decisions to the district governments through the District Service
Commissions (DSCs) was considered to be one of the cornerstones of the Ugandan
decentralization reforms (Bossert & Beauvais, 2002). Prior to civil service
decentralization, local government officials were either seconded to local
governments or placed in a unified personnel system for all local governments in the
country (Olowu, 2001). With the onset of decentralization, civil servants posted to the
districts were formally transferred to local governments and separate DSCs were set
up to manage human resources in districts and local administrations. The right of
DSCs to hire, fire and oversee district staff was anchored in the 1995 Constitution and
further consolidated in the Local Government Act (1997). Members of the DSC are

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The Journal of African & Asian Local Government Studies
appointed by the district council on the recommendation of the district executive
committee with approval of the central government's Public Service Commission
(PSC), hold office for a period of four years, and are eligible for appointment for one
more term. From 2006-following a Constitutional amendment the previous year-
Uganda witnessed a wave towards recentralization of some elements of local
government personnel administration (Nabaho, 2011, 2012). The power to hire and
fire Chief Administrative Officers of districts, their deputies; and town clerks of
municipalities were shifted from DSCs to the central government's PSC. The goal of
recentralizing the high level administrators was to improve accountability and
enhance the performance of local governments (Manyak & Katono, 2010). It was
further intended to make them more effective than working under the patronage of
local politicians (IGG, 2008). Critics of recentralization of top most administrators in
local governments strongly argue that Uganda made a fundamental error by solving
administrative problems in local governments through centralization and predict that
recentralization would result in a snowball effect, where local accountability
mechanisms would become totally undermined (Steffensen,2006). It can now be
inferred that Uganda's local government personnel system is now largely manifested
in a separate personnel type and partly in an integrated one (Kakumba, 2008). While
exercising their mandate, DSCs are by law required to conform to standards
established by the PSC for the Public Service generally. Article 166(1) [d] of the
Constitution and Section 58 of the Local Government Act (Cap 243) (GoU,
1997:5343) insulate the DSC from any external influence by unequivocally stating
that, 'The District Service Commission shall be independent and shall not be subject to
control or direction of any person or authority'. Section 56(1) [a]-[d] of the same Act
spells out the minimum qualifications for member of the DSC: being ordinarily a
resident of the district; being a person of high moral character and proven integrity;
possessing a minimum of ten years working experience in a responsible position; and
being in possession of a diploma qualification. It should be noted that it is upon the
above minimum criteria that the PSC approves members of the DSCs.
Article 166(1) [d] and [e] mandates the PSC to guide, coordinate and regulate
the DSCs. Section 59(2) of the Local Government Act provides for people aggrieved
by decisions of the DSCs to appeal to the PSC. When an aggrieved individual appeals
against the decision of the DSC to the PSC, the decision of the former remains valid
until the appellant body has ruled over the matter. District Service Commissions are
required to appoint staff in strict adherence to merit principles. This requirement
echoes Max Weber-the German Sociologist-who stressed that merit should be the
foundation upon which civil servants, at whatever level of government, should be
appointed. Weber advocated for a civil service where selection of personnel should be

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competitive and based on demonstrated merit. Selection based on merit arguably
reduces the likelihood of incompetence that can result from appointing civil servants
through nepotism and patronage. Since Weber's days, merit has become synonymous
with an effective bureaucracy. Public sector reforms in developed and developing
countries have and continue to stress merit-based recruitment and selection. Merit can
simply be defined as appointment of the best person for any given job (McCourt,
2007). The 'best person' definition implies a focus on individual jobs at all levels; the
appointee is the best candidate; posts are open to all eligible candidates; and the
appointment process is systematic, transparent and challengeable. In public
administration systems where merit is observed in breach than in practice, focus is on
the point of entry; the appointee is merely able (not outstandingly able) to do the job;
posts are restricted to certain candidates; and the appointment process may be
arbitrary, secretive and unchallengeable. It may therefore be inferred that in merit-
based recruitment and selection, civil service appointments are devoid of patronage or
illicit payments. In other words, job offers should be made to persons who are
'outstandingly able to do the job' as opposed to those who are 'merely able to do the
job'. Merit systems provide public sector organizations with the opportunity to place
the right persons in the right jobs. Breach of merit in recruitment and selection can,
without doubt, breed undesirable and potentially negative consequences on good
governance and service delivery. There is no doubt that appointments based on
patronage undermine the capacity of the bureaucracy; lower the integrity of the civil
service; and limit economic growth and therefore poverty reduction. Merit- based
appointment has over time been associated with the quality and integrity of the civil
service at various levels of government. Anti-corruption crusaders have discerned it
out as one of the major factors associated with low incidences of corruption in the
implementing arm of government (World Bank, 1997:16; United Nations, 2005:80).
Merit is increasingly being accepted in policy circles as an anti-corruption strategy.
Merit-based recruitment is further associated with economic growth. Bureaucracies
with strong meritocratic tradition are associated with superior economic growth
(Raunch & Evans, 2000). The 'miracle' era in East Asia is attributed, in part, to
meritocratic selection.
Studies on recruitment and selection practices in local governments of
Uganda show that it is less than adequate in relation to the 'best practices' in
recruitment and selection (e.g. Francis & James,2003; Kakumba,2003; Ministry of
Public Service, 2003; Ministry of Local Government,2004; IGG, 2008; Therkildsen &
Ti d e m a n d , 2 0 0 7 ; G a l i w a n g o , 2 0 0 8 ; K a k u m b a , 2 0 0 8 ; A m o n y, 2 0 1 0 ;
Nabaho,2011,2012). The above studies have revealed that factors such as patronage,
nepotism, favoritism and political interference, to some degree, interfere with

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recruitment and selection processes in local governments in Uganda. With regard to
patronage and nepotism, technical 'know-who' as opposed to 'technical know-how'
has an immense potential to bolster a candidate's chances of getting appointed in the
district civil service (Galiwango, 2008; Kakumba, 2008; Nabaho, 2012). The
recruitment process in local governments can also be described as inward looking and
biased against candidates from other districts. It favors 'sons and daughters of the soil'-
a phrase that refers to preference of workers who originate from the local government.
Rather than DSCs hiring staff 'for the district from the national labor market', as
demanded by the current legal and policy frameworks, some DSCs persistently
appoint staff 'for the district from the local/district labor market' (Nabaho, 2012). The
National Integrity Survey by the Inspectorate of Government (IGG) in 2008
confirmed discriminatory tendencies when it was reported that 'DSCs had persistently
chosen to recruit people from local areas'. Breach of merit principles undermines the
issue of equity and equal opportunity, especially when someone is granted a civil
service position because of connections and district of origin rather than because
he/she is qualified for the job. The practice further undermines the national character
of public administration (Francis & James, 2003). Similarly, when merit principles
assume a back seat in recruitment and selection, technical capacity of the civil service
is greatly undermined and this consequently weaken the overall performance of local
governments. For example, Therkildsen and Tidemand (2007) established that
districts in Uganda that upheld merit principles performed better than those that had
not and partly attributed differences in performance across local governments to
merit-based recruitment and selection. One conclusion emerges from the pioneer
work of Therkildsen and Tidemand- strengthening appointments on merit is a simple
and yet powerful way in which local governments can improve their overall
performance and quality of service delivery to residents. The above academic works
(e.g. Kakumba, Galiwango, Nabaho, 2011, 2012; Amony, 2010) have made a notable
contribution by identifying a problem that undermines the efficacy of Uganda's
decentralization policy. However, with the exception of Kakumba (2008), the rest of
the studies do not delve into the explanatory variables for non-adherence to merit
principles by local governments, and can therefore not inform policy decisions aimed
promoting merit- based recruitment and selection. Consequently, we know little about
what sustains patronage, nepotism and favoritism in civil service selection in
Uganda's local government system. The next section explores the obstacles to merit in
local governments of Uganda.

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4. Obstacles to merit
In this section, we explore obstacles to merit-based recruitment and selection
in Uganda's local government system. It is the earnest desire of the central government
and other stakeholders in local governments to ensure that recruitment and selection in
local government are not at variance with merit principles. It should be appreciated
that the starting point for ensuring merit-based recruitment and selection is to
comprehend the myriad of possible forces which oppose it. In problem solving, it is
often said that a problem is solved by understanding a range of forces that sustain it and
accordingly weakening them. In discussing the obstacle to merit, we take cognizance
of the fact that appointments are not made in an organizational vacuum, and are
affected by the general climate and practices which surround them (McCourt, 2007).
Below are the forces that sustain patronage, nepotism and favoritism in local
governments that emerged from our investigation.

Legal framework for appointing the DSC and the defacto local eligibility criteria
for appointing members of the DSC
Our study has established that malpractices in recruitment and selection at
the local government level cannot be divorced from legal framework for appointing
the DSC and the local eligibility criteria that has covertly been set by some district
councils. The recruitment agencies are appointed by the district councils, on the
recommendation of the district executive committees, with approval of the PSC. The
approval of district nominees to the DSC by the PSC is intended to ensure that the
minimum qualifications for appointment-as provided in the Constitution and Local
Government Act-are achieved. One theme that strongly emerged from our
investigation was that the appointment of people into the DSC adopts unfair and
unethical patronage practices based on considerations and criteria other than merit.
There are concerns that those appointed into the DSC are former campaign
managers/agents of the political heads of the districts or local politicians. Asked about
criteria district chairpersons use to nominate persons to serve on the DSC, one
respondent in Galiwango (2008:206) replied,

One cannot be appointed to the DSC unless one was a campaign

agent of the ruling [district] chairperson. It has become one way of
appeasement and entrenchment for incumbents

The above assertion is a confirmation that merit is observed in breach than in

practice while appointing people into the DSC. The legal framework for appointing
the DSC and the local eligibility criteria for appointing DSC members have two major
implications for recruitment and selection of civil servants.
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The Journal of African & Asian Local Government Studies
First, the DSC is susceptible to undue political influence by appointing
authority. Some DSCs find it hard not to dance to the tunes of local politicians who are
perceived to be their bosses by virtue of having nominated and consequently
appointed them to the DSC. There are already clear indications that DSCs are
responding to the wishes of the appointing authority despite the Constitutional
provision which safeguards them against external influence. In the Draft
Restructuring Report for Local Governments in Uganda (2003), the Ministry of Public
Service (2003:3) noted that, 'District Service Commissions tended to appoint staff
recommended by [local] politicians'. During our interviews with CAOs, one of them
strongly responded as follows, '...the hand of the district council is invisible and yet
very powerful in almost every selection decision by the District Service
Commissions'. The same respondent called for working out an arrangement that
would ensure that the DSC is not an organ of council. Galiwango (2008:209) reports
one respondent-a senior civil servant in a district- having said:

'It is difficult to get a [civil service] job in the district unless the
councilors have talked to the chairperson [of the DSC]. The DSC is
just a rubber stamp’

Second, the way that a DSC is constituted significantly influences how it

conducts its mandate or behaves. A DSC appointed in total disregard of merit
principles is unlikely to exercise its functions on merit. With regard to recruitment and
selection, such a DSC has low chances of appointing civil servants on merit (Nabaho,
2012). This implies that when merit becomes the overarching consideration for
appointing the DSC, there is a high likelihood of such a DSC to appoint staff on merit.
Furthermore, a DSC that is constituted on narrow interests-such as rewarding former
campaign agents- will be predisposed to serve narrow interests: appeasing the
appointing authority or their 'appeaser(s)'
Now that we have linked breach of merit to the way that the DSC is
appointed, the largely unanswered question is: how do we move forward? We must
assert that this paper is not prescriptive-it is only intended to inform further
discussions on how to put local governments on the much needed meritocratic path.
We will therefore provide thematic areas upon which the discourse to fix the problem
may be based. The first theme has to do with enhancement of appreciation of merit by
local council leaders and members of the DSCs. The second theme, one which was
proposed by one of the respondents, is to break the umbilical cord between the DSC
and the district council or more precisely ensuring that the DSC is not an organ of the
district council. The third option would be fundamentally altering the personnel

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 Nabaho & Kiiza • Human Resource Management
system/arrangement in local governments. Two alternative personnel systems quickly
come to mind: an integrated personnel system and a unified personnel system. An
integrated personnel system would imply that the personnel of the central government
and that of local government form part of the same service and transfers are possible
not only between local governments but also to the departments of the central
government (Maheshwari, 2011). The central government would be mandated to
appoint and post staff to local authorities to meet service delivery needs. Such a
personnel arrangement would be offensive to proponents of decentralization by
devolution since it leads to direct control of civil servants by the central government
and further occasions a split between loyalties of senior officials managing
decentralized services: their 'operational' loyalty to local councils and their 'career'
loyalty to central masters. It is often argued that senior officials who have any ambition
for their future would unlikely defend the council's interests where such interest
demonstrably clash with the ideas of a minister or the central government. In addition,
centralized structures have been criticized for inherently being incapable of satisfying
local needs since; rarely do incentives exist for central government officials to
perceive citizens as their clientele (Lubanga, 1998). Similarly, such a system would
undermine the accountability of civil servants to local councils. The second menu of
the personnel system is the unified one. In unified personnel arrangements, local
government staff are employed locally but organized nationwide in a single civil
service parallel to the central one (Mawhood, 1983). In practice, all local government
civil servants would be members of a national 'local government civil service' and
would be eligible to be transferred between local governments. Normally, a national
body-Local Government Service Commission- takes charge of the local government
staff. The Local Government Service Commission (LGSC) does what the PSC does
for the national civil service. There is also a possibility of having a separate personnel
system operating side by side with either an integrated or unified personnel
arrangement. In Uganda, the integrated personnel system operates for top most
administrators in districts and municipalities while the rest of the district staff are
appointed under the separate personnel system. Malawi presents an interesting case
where senior officials are appointed under the unified personnel arrangement while
the rest of the staff of local governments are managed under the separate personnel
system. In the case of Uganda, this would mean enlarging the category of staff to be
managed under such a hybrid system. We also take cognizance of the fact that there
could be those who are opposed to any variation in the current separate personnel
system in Uganda's local government system. Such stakeholders may argue that the
current personnel system has no problem; the problem is with the actors in the system.

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The Journal of African & Asian Local Government Studies
Size and ethnic composition of district local governments
The wave to create new districts in Uganda has gathered and continues to
gather momentum. In 1991, Uganda had 39 districts. By 2008, Uganda had 79 districts
and the fourth largest number of sub-national administrative units after Russia with 83
federal units. We cannot tell with precision the global position that Uganda currently
holds as far as the number of higher administrative units is concerned. Uganda has the
smallest average number of people per sub-national administrative unit (district)
among large countries in Africa (Green, 2008b). As on 1 July 2010-a few months to the
presidential and parliamentary elections- the number of districts had skyrocketed to
111 with one city. The central government has already tabled a proposal in Parliament
to create 25 more district local governments. The unprecedented growth of districts in
Uganda, especially during President Museveni's regime, has attracted scholarly
attention into the plausible reasons for the demand for districts by citizens and the
inability of government to reject such demands. Green (2008b) has identified the
following as reasons that have frequently been advanced for creating new sub-national
governments in Uganda: improving service delivery; ethno-linguistic conflict
management; gerrymandering; the inability of the central government to resist local
demands for districts; and patronage, job creation and electoral politics. He concludes
that the plausible reasons for creating districts are patronage, job creation and electoral
politics. It is not our intention to engage in a discourse on the politics of district
creation in Uganda. But one thing is clear: the creation of new districts has reduced
what were once ethnically heterogeneous districts to ones largely populated by one or
two major ethnic groups. We argue that the size of the districts and their attendant ethic
composition have major implications for civil service management in local
governments. Small districts-and more especially those formed along ethnic lines-
heighten patronage, nepotism and favoritism in civil service appointment. With small
districts, there is a high likelihood of conglomerating highly homogeneous people.
This homogeneity can be in terms of ethnic group, religion, etc. Commenting on
implications of the size of districts in Uganda on human resource management in local
governments, one CAO remarked, 'Districts [in Uganda] are too small to the extent
that almost everyone is related to the other'. The above assertion has two implications
for human resource management generally and for recruitment and selection in
particular. First, with a small district, it is easier to find a patron. Second, people who
are related to each other would preferably hire those who are related to them. Hence,
the size and ethnic composition of districts can heighten patronage, nepotism and
favoritism in civil service recruitment and selection (Nabaho, 2012). This should lead
us to rethink the criteria for creating districts under the decentralized system of
governance. A more rational criterion for creating districts is that one which takes into

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 Nabaho & Kiiza • Human Resource Management
account factors such as population and geographical area. This criterion may be
difficult to employ with big ethic groups in Uganda such as Baganda, Basoga and
Bagisu. It is doubtful whether such a criteria would put an end to appointing the so
called 'sons and daughters of the soil'. But what is certain is that it can change the
character of the district civil services from those dominated by a single or few ethnic
groups to those comprising multi-ethnic groups.

Association of districts with employment

Among the local people, having their 'own' district is associated with creating
employment for the indigenes. There have been discernible cases where, specifically
in multi-ethnic districts, some ethnic groups have agitated for district status simply
because of perceived marginalization in the district civil service or because they hold
few senior civil service positions. One of our respondents corroborated this notion by
observing that, 'One of the major reasons for agitating for district status by the local
people in most parts of Uganda is to create jobs. Once the district status has been given,
applicants from other districts are considered persona non grata when it comes to
accessing job opportunities in the district'. Because districts are associated with
employment, districts tend to first consider 'sons and daughters of the soil' while
appointing staff in various civil service positions. District Service Commissions
advertise job opportunities in national newspapers to elicit responses from across the
entire country-merely to give an impression that jobs are eligible to all qualified
Ugandan- but the actual selection to fill vacant positions is in most cases done from
the local (district) labor markets. Applicants born and residing outside the district and
seeking to fill vacant positions are, in some cases, shortlisted and interviewed
purposely to give credibility to the recruitment and selection process. However, a
caveat needs to be put here. Asserting that appointment in the district civil service
favors 'sons and daughters of the soil' does not connote that district public services are
devoid of people hailing from other districts. In exceptional circumstances-principally
where suitable local candidates have not been found-DSCs may appoint from the
national labor market but in some respects, such appointments may not be purely on
merit.

5. Conclusion
Unlike previous studies that focused on providing evidence that merit is
sacrificed during recruitment and selection in local governments, this study has made
a contribution by identifying factors that undermine merit based recruitment and
selection in sub-national governments. The study has demonstrated that three factors
work in concert to promote patronage, nepotism and discrimination in recruitment and

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The Journal of African & Asian Local Government Studies
selection in local governments: legal framework for appointing the DSC and the local,
albeit illegal, eligibility criteria for appointing individuals to the DSC; size and ethnic
composition of district local governments; and association of districts with
employment for the indigenes. We therefore believe that any intervention aimed at
entrenching merit in recruitment and selection should take cognizance of these
factors. We also recommend a quantitative study with a view to establishing the
strength of the factors we have identified.

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