Nobert Mao, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs
The Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs has called for the exemption of State Attorneys from paying income tax in order to bridge the gap in the salary disparities between their counterparts the States Prosecutors in the Office of the Directorate of Public Prosecution (ODPP) and Judicial Officers serving in the Judiciary.
The request was made by Nobert Mao, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs on 16th January 2025 while appearing before the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, during the consideration of the Ministry’s 2025/26 Budget Framework Paper.
“Many of our staff are looking out of the window of the Ministry of Justice for greener pastures, many of our lawyers are now applying to join the Judiciary because the terms and conditions are better. The DPP’s office isn’t facing the same problem because they have been relieved of Income Tax, so they get better pay,” said Mao.
He added: “We want the same for the Ministry of Justice Attorneys so that they can also be given a competitive remuneration and they stop seeking for greener pastures outside. Every year, we lose some of our best lawyers, and yet we have invested in training them and all of a sudden, they are going to High Court because the terms and conditions are a whole better. This attrition the quality of our work.”
However, Fox Odoi (West Budama North East) wondered what remedy Minister Mao expects to get from Parliament over what he termed a primitive request that was solved in the United States in the 1930 where they enacted a law on equal pay for equal work, yet decades later, Uganda is grappling with the same challenge in 2025.
He said, “You are inviting us to remedy “primitivity” and we don’t know how. The Minister is asking us to engage him in “primitivity” and I apologize for calling this primitivity but I think so because there is no polite name for it. We are talking about 2025, the Minister states that he has lawyers in ODPP who are paid more than lawyers in Attorney General’s Chambers. Same work, different pay. The last I heard of this discussion was in the US in the 1930s and they came up with perfect solution, equal pay for the same work.”
Odoi expressed shock at how in 2025, the Minister of Justice for the republic of Uganda is still talking about disparity in pay for the same work, when he sits in Cabinet that comes up with these primitive policies.
Minister Mao didn’t take Odoi’s description of his request as primitive lightly, saying that within the public realm, Ugandans think that the same primitivity starts from Parliament and Executive who are earning fat salaries yet the leaders carrying out the heavy monitoring of Government programs down at the lowest levels are earners a salary comparing to the size of legs of spiders, while the top guys flourish in fat salaries.
