[UAH] Ugandans aren’t lazy, we just trade on the side

Daniel Kalinaki

Ugandans aren't lazy, we just trade on the side

Statistical reports usually cause as much excitement as drying paint. They are usually produced by middle-aged men in suits for middle-aged men in suits. But the State of Uganda Population Report 2010 released recently by the Population Secretariat caused a few ripples in the water by revealing that Ugandan workers are the least productive, man for man, in the region.

The report revealed that one Kenyan worker does the same amount of work as six Ugandans, while it takes four Ugandans to do the same work done by one Tanzanian. Don't even try comparing us to the Asian Tigers; our worker productivity is 68 per cent lower than that of workers in India and 96 per cent lower than in China.

The reaction to the report was predictable: the Federation of Ugandan Employers expressed surprise; the Uganda Investment Authority said the figures were dodgy; while some local employers said it couldn't be true. Few of the newspaper reports about the matter quoted Ugandan employees – probably because they were out for long lunch breaks, or had missed work to attend a burial or a wedding. See, the report notes that one in four Ugandan workers had called in sick in the previous 30 days.

A lot of the debate on the matter – and I am surprised and disappointed that it was not as extensive a debate – focused on the anthropological connotations of the report. In other words, whether Ugandans are naturally lazy and whether Kenyans are more hardworking and therefore better employees. I think such generalisations are simplistic and diversionary; I know many Ugandans who work long hours with plenty of dedication and commitment. I also know many lazy Kenyans.

Worker productivity – and the report, if one reads beyond the headlines, has useful insights on this – is a function of the skills and values that the worker has and the environment within which they work. Many Ugandan workers turn up late to work, spend hours gossiping, stretch their lunch breaks, leave early, and miss several days due to burials, illness etc., but do they do as much as they should when they finally turn up to work? In many cases the answer to that question is 'no'. The obvious ones are that we are sickly and our education system is hopelessly out of sync with the needs of the workplace.

We have also failed to structurally transform our economy by shifting jobs to the higher-income urban service and manufacturing sectors from agriculture while increasing productivity in the latter sector. So we have a growing population caught between the poverty of rural unproductivity and the poverty of urban unemployment.

While numbers never lie, they don't always tell the full story. This report says less than two out of every 10 Ugandans in the labour force are in formal salaried employment, with the rest in self-employment or agriculture. It might be useful, at this juncture to ask: who are these formal employers?

The largest employers are government and its diverse agencies, multinational firms with local operations, or local firms with foreign ownership. Few of these companies are listed on the local stock exchange and few offer stock option benefits to employees.

The incentive for workers to give 100 per cent is therefore directly related to the sanctions they will get, such as being fired, not the rewards, which are often fixed.

So many Ugandan workers do just enough to keep their jobs and then sneak off to do other jobs on the side or run private businesses. How many doctors run private clinics and how many civil servants run businesses on the side?

Ugandans are not lazy; if anything, they are very hardworking but by serving more than one master, they often please neither. The question for managers seeking to get the most out of their employees is: do you pay more to raise productivity and dedication, or do you peg pay on productivity and dedication?

For answers, send me a cheque and a self-addressed envelope…

dkalinaki@ug.nationmedia.com

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H.OGWAPITI
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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that  we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic  and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt

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