President Yoweri Museveni, the commander in chief of armed forces and the Inspector General of Police, Martin Ochola, have promoted more than 15,000 police officers In the past two years. This has given a smile to police officers who had lost hope since promotions were last held in 2016.
Museveni promoted 1,603 senior police officers this year while Ochola has promoted 9,312 lower ranking police officers. Museveni promotes officers from the rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police -ASP to Assistant Inspector General of Police -AIGP while Ochola promotes those from Police Constable to Inspector of Police -IP.
Ochola said the frequency of promotions and numbers of promoted officers would have been more, but there was a backlog created as a result of investigations initiated by the Inspectorate of Government on the previous promotions of 2016.
“The investigations by the office of the Inspectorate of Government created a big backlog with dire consequences to our human resource administration and development. For example, currently, this phase has the highest number of promoted officers in the history of the Uganda Police Force, but still, there are many other deserving officers pending,” Ochola said.
Trust GEEPAS for Genuine Electronics: 0707080087
Ochola has extolled the Appointments/ Promotions Committees and all the relevant stakeholders for the work so far done. He has promised to address the continued occurrence of the few irregularities, although minor, in the promotion process that continue to dent or threaten the promotion system that we are building.
“To have a robust system, demands constant work to improve our Force’s Human Resource management, including Information Technology through building and maintaining a clean data base for our Human Resource,” he said.
Ochola has emphasized that the force’s immediate goal and task at hand is to integrate technology in human resource management, above all, to address the few loopholes in the recruitment, deployment, promotion and retirement of officers.
The IGP has said there is need to equip newly promoted officers with the relevant policing knowledge and skills is our other priority. This will be through conducting several management and career courses. The focus will be on training. This take large-scale training on integrity, ideological orientation, human rights, customer care and general professional conduct should become a regular part of our Forces’ life.
“The other most urgent priority is to address the challenge of welfare. As over recent years, we will continue to improve the welfare of our officers. We hope to fully resolve the issue of providing decent housing soon,” Ochola said.
Police said a task of particular importance for the UPF Management is to ensure that all officers that merit, but were not promoted, are identified and set for promotion in the next phase. It is important to make sure that the promotion process remains transparent and free from manipulation.