A senior local government official has refused to go into retirement, begging for the extension of his contract by two more years, and insisting nobody is qualified to succeed him.
Deogracious Akorimo, the Mbale District Engineer, has written to the District Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) applying for contract renewal even when he clocked the mandatory age of 60 on May 04, and is supposed to be retiring.
Engineer Akorimo has been working for Mbale District Local Government for 18 years, having been recruited in 2004. But he says he needs some more time to work for the district since the salary from the job means a lot for him and his family.
In his letter to the Mbale CAO, Akorimo advanced a number of reasons. He says that he still needs the job since it is his main source of money to pay his children’s school fees, and retirement would disrupt their education goals.
“All my four biological children are still school going with the elder two now at university level and being privately sponsored by me and each of them is left with about two years to complete their education,” explained Engineer Akorimo.
He also argues that extending his contract would compensate him after almost two decades of work without promotion. “Ever since I was recruited to work in Mbale District in the year 2004, I have never had a chance to be promoted possibly due to the rigid structure of the district. The contract would in my opinion some as some compensation for me,” he wrote.
The engineer went on to inform the CAO that he still has some pending work that he needs to finish and a period of about 24 months would be enough for him to finish this work and leave office. “I have some uncompleted projects which need to be accomplished within those two years,” Akorimo noted.
The Mbale engineer further told the Chief Administrative Officer that he has not seen anyone with the skills and competencies to replace him. Akorimo also says that his retirement would create more vacuum in the district since government has failed to fill the office of assistant engineer four years after the former occupant retired.
“There is no groomed person in the sector to take over the mantle from me in executing issues of maintenance of especially modern and delicate road equipment, fleet of vehicles and motorcycles, and above all I was trained on the matters of fleet management by Ministry of Works and Transport on a number of occasions,” wrote Akorimo, who signs off his letter as the CAO’s “obedient servant” who is “hoping” for “utmost consideration.”
“More to this, when my assistant went on mandatory retirement four years ago, there has never been an attempt to replace him up to date, therefore creating a big vacuum in the mechanical sector.”
