The Committee chaired by Hon. Reagan Okumu (Ind., Aswa) also directed the Arua district Accounting Officer to immediately recover four motor cycles allocated to various staff but went missing in a period of one financial year.

The Yamaha motorcycles each valued at UShs14 million were given to the staff in different departments to facilitate service delivery. A review of Arua Municipal Council’s fixed assets and an audit verification carried out revealed that the motorcycles purchased in March 2015 were stolen outside council premises and beyond working hours.

The Committee, which camped in Arua 5 – 8 July 2018 summoned Accounting Officers from the Arua Audit Region to answer queries raised in the Auditor General’s Report for the financial year ended 30th June 2017.

Arua Audit Region includes Arua district, Arua Municipal Council, Maracha, Yumbe and Koboko districts, Koboko Municipality, Nebbi district and Nebbi Municipal Council. It also includes Zombo, Moyo and Adjumani districts.

Hon. Okumu doubted claims that the motorcycles had all been stolen in period of less than a year.

“This must be a syndicate by officers to steal these motorcycles,” said Okumu.

Arua neighbours the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan which are both safe heavens for stolen motorcycles and vehicles. The 2016 crime report released by the International Police (Interpol) Directorate in Kampala shows that 516 cars and 395 motorcycles were sneaked into DRC, as the go-to destination, by cross boarder criminals.

The Committee observed that the low recovery adversely impacts on government’s objective of setting up the program as a revolving fund. File photo

Arua Municipal Council Town Clerk Jamil Kairu, who is less than a year in the position, attributed the messed up accountabilities and wasteful expenditure to the former accounting officer.

He also admitted that some Municipal staff had opened a side and unauthorized bank account where they were depositing revenue collections.

“The under declaration of local revenue is due to a false collection bank account and over estimation of local revenue from markets, licences, taxi parks and land management dues,” said Kairu.

Meanwhile, districts in the region have registered low recovery of funds lent out to youths under the Youth Livelihood Project. West Nile district are faced with low recovery of youth livelihood funds, especially Arua and Koboko districts.

The Committee observed that the low recovery adversely impacts on government’s objective of setting up the program as a revolving fund.

Arua district Accounting Officer Ismael Onhengel admitted that recovery of funds under the Programme remains a challenge.

Whistleblowers however intimated to the Committee that some beneficiaries of the funds in West Nile Region were Congolese who crossed back to DRC through the porous border after receiving the money.

In Koboko district where UShs 179 billion was advanced to youths, less than half had been recovered by 30 June 2017. In the same district, it was reported that UShs 10 million under the Universal Secondary Education was released to Koboko Modern Secondary School, which had been closed over land disputes with the neighbouring community.

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This was disclosed by the minister of state for Higher Education Dr John Chrysostom Muyingo.

Dr. Muyingo said that the rise in enrollment of USE students has not been matched with government secondary school facilities and teachers due to limited financial support.

He said that inadequate USE schools has caused overcrowding in classes which limits effective learning.

Dr. Muyingo says that government is consulting private secondary school to work together for the success of USE.

USE progamme was started in 2007 to accommodate the UPE students and since then 599,659 students have enrolled in USE schools.

By Isaac Senabulya

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Many grils still dropping out of school

Addressing over 100 Muslim women from ten districts that had turned up to participate in the reading and reciting the Koran verses, Sheik Yusuf  observed that the universal education has greatly eradicated illiteracy and ignorance in Uganda.

Sheik Kalule appealed to all Moslems to read the Koran every day which he says is vital in grooming quality professionals in the Islamic faith.

Sheik Kalule turned weapons against vices of homosexuality and lesbianism among men and women respectively and urged Ugandan authorities to use an iron hand in fighting such evil practices.

He condemned the poor and provocative dressing among girls which he said is disgrace to parents and disastrous to men.

Mukundane Sydat from Mbarara, Hadijja Nakavuma of Ibanda and Sulaina Sumahili of Kasese were declared the best readers of the holy book Koran.

By Sunday Rogers

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However, Economics experts from the Social Development Sector (SDS) from different government departments especially the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development have expressed concern that the economic growth averaging more than 6% over the past decade has not
generated the expected job creation and has therefore not helped many people get out of poverty.

FAO World poverty map

This, they say is mainly because the majority of the poor derive their main income from wage employment and hence wage income is the critical determinant of their living conditions.

SDS experts from the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development say that Uganda’s economic improvement may
have been spurred only by productivity gains without having any effect on creating jobs as expected.

“According to Uganda Investment Authority records, 1 job has been realised for every 2 jobs projected. Employment projections today stand at some 210,000 jobs, suggesting that just over 100,000 jobs have been created through new investments on a cumulative basis since 1990,” reads their report.

This means that almost 22 years on, new investments have not yet even offset the 150,000 jobs the Civil Service
retrenchment created in 1988.

“Such job losses amidst low levels of employment tends to lend credence to the possibility that Uganda’s economic growth could be a phenomenon of job-loss growth, and therefore exclusive and inequitable,” reads the report, a result of sector discussions.

The Uganda Bureau of Statistics Report (UBOS) in the 2001/02 Business Register also indicates that only 3.6% of the economically active population are employed by the private sector, where the private sector is defined as formal or informal business operating from fixed premises.

Only 29% of these workers are female, and only 5.2% of them are employed in Northern Uganda, with the bulk of the employment, 63.4%, occurring in the Central Region.

This show there is regional inequality in employment. The experts say that’s why income inequalities have remained large and unchanged in spite of the high economic growth rates (averaging 6%) registered by Uganda.

Also, one has to note that the bulk of the Ugandan labour force is engaged in informal employment activities. According to the Uganda Business Register, 2001/2002, of the 160,000 enterprises (excluding defence and administration) employing 440,000 people, 87% are informal, employing less than 5 people, mostly less than 2 persons.

Employment creation has been described as a top priority for the country to exit poverty. Indeed, of the 12 factors identified by 19 communities as responsible for moving people out of poverty, the most stressed in the Uganda Participatory Poverty
Assessment studies has been employment and availability of opportunities while the other factors identified relate to inaccessibility to productive assets like land, education, capital which are key determinants to self-employment

“The low levels of wage as opposed to self employment opportunities vis-à-vis the growing labour force has been identified as a major social and economic problem which has contributed to persistent poverty in Uganda. Employment, by providing people with access to wages, therefore constitutes one of the most important forces in improving economic equity. Without sufficient growth in employment opportunities, the ability of an economy to eradicate poverty and inequality can be
severely compromised.”

The report says that in order to achieve the broader objectives of the PEAP which was converted into the National Development Plan, it is important to support mechanisms being formulated by the SDS to widen access for wage employment as opposed to self-employment.

“Government also needs to implement strategies focusing on uplifting wages and conditions at the lower end of wage employment,” it reads.

Unless arrested, the situation is likely to worsen, the experts say. Because at over 11.3 million and growing at 3.4% per annum, Uganda’s labour force is adding approximately 380,000 new entrants to the labour market, most of them young, illiterate and unskilled.

The report also expresses concern over the pool of the illiterate and unskilled population that is still expanding at  “a high rate in spite of the UPE and USE programmes, all of which are not being helped by the privatisation process.

“It is clear from the cross-country data that these dropouts from school will remain largely unemployed since the lower the level of education the higher the rate of unemployment.”

But researchers recently released another report further complicating this analysis, showing that the increasing number of graduates inUganda is increasing unemployment and poverty.

Two Professors, David Krybill of Ohio State University in the USA and Barnabas Kiiza from Makerere University have said that the increased number of students completing university level of education is increasing poverty in Uganda.

The professors who last year presented a paper on poverty at Parliament said that while the increase in pupil’s finishing primary substantially reduced poverty levels in communities, increased number of university graduates is increasing poverty.

They say that this is because many graduates have a high level of consumption yet they may not be employed
to pay for their needs. The professors who are carrying out a survey on poverty levels in Uganda advised that government to put more emphasis on primary and secondary education.

They also told Parliament that their survey shows that any additional child a woman produces in Uganda intensifies poverty by 11 percent.

In their interim report-explaining poverty in Uganda, the professors note with concern that while the world looks forward for a decline in poverty levels by 15 percent come 2015 especially in China and India, poverty in Africa and Uganda in particular is expected to increase.

The analysis is backed by the facts in the 2004 statistics from the Uganda Bureau of statistics, which show that poverty in Uganda has been increasing since the year 2000.

The Bureau of statistics indicates that National poverty levels increased from 33.8 percent in the period 1999/2000 to 37.7 in the period 2002/2003.

The Professors call for increased accessibility to infrastructure like roads, telephones, health centres, financial institutions; education centres and markets help reduce poverty levels.

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Uganda Martyrs university students in class

The efforts center on the Universal Secondary Education (USE) policy, a policy that has helped increase transition rates between primary and secondary school from 51 percent in 2006 to 69 percent in 2007. USE is part of the Ugandan government’s Universal Post Primary Education and Training (UPPET) program. Launched in 2007, UPPET aims to provide quality options for the increasing numbers of students completing primary education and seeking a secondary education after the successful Universal Primary Education programme.

The World Bank’s involvement began in 2009 with the launch of the UPPET project that included financial contributions of about 20 percent of the UPPET program budget. Additional support comes from development partners including the African Development Bank, the Belgian Embassy/Technical Cooperation, Embassy of Ireland, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the United Nations Population Fund and the Netherlands Embassy.

“The UPPET project ushered in an ambitious and comprehensive reform program to provide universal access to quality post primary education and training which has played a critical role in providing future workers with competencies and knowledge required for increase in productivity and labor mobility,” says Dr. Yusuf Nsubuga, Director of Basic Education at the Ministry of Education in Kampala.

In 2009, following the UPPET project launch, the Ministry recruited an additional 1400 teachers. As a result of the boost, secondary enrollment rates have gone from just over 160,000 in 2007 to more than 452,000 in 2009, according to the Ministry. Transition rates are estimated to reach 74 percent in 2010, up from 69 percent in 2007.

“As the government efforts to improve access to and the quality of primary education bear fruit, the percentage of students passing the primary school leavers exam will continue to increase, thereby raising the pool of potential secondary school students,” said Nsubuga.

In addition to funding the hiring of more teachers, the program is also improving the country’s education infrastructure, according to Ms. Sukhdeep Brar, World Bank Senior Education Specialist and Task Team Leader for the UPPET.

“The project provides for construction of 4,297 new classrooms and completion and/or rehabilitation of 1,864 classrooms,” Brar said. “These additional classrooms will ease the pressure on existing facilities, reducing student to classroom ratios thereby enabling improved learning.”

The project also provides additional facilities such as improved sanitation, improved water supply, multi-purpose science rooms and libraries, as well as supplies such as science kits and text books Brar said.

World Bank Support

World Bank support to the UPPET is in the form of a $150 million International Development Association (IDA)-financed adjustable program loan (APL) to be implemented in three phases over a 10-year period. The intervention in Uganda furthers the World Bank’s goal of improving the quality of education and supporting countries as they seek to attain the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including the goal of achieving Universal Education. The APL is to be implemented over a 10-year period in three phases. The loan is currently in Phase 1.

In addition, “efficiencies in procurement are likely to result in significantly improving the student to textbook ratios for the seven core subjects,” Brar said. “The project also supports a review of the lower secondary curriculum and some additional studies to inform further improvements.”

In partnership with other donors, the Bank also is assisting Uganda’s government as they develop a strategy for Business, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (BTVET). The aim of the strategy is to meet the demands of a growing and better trained workforce.

Challenges Ahead

Uganda is on track to achieve its 2015 target of 100 percent enrollment, according to the 2007 United Nations Development Programme mid-term report on Uganda’s performance on the MDGs.

But beyond the numbers, significant challenges still remain. A need exists for additional facilities (classrooms, science laboratories, libraries, improved water and sanitation); qualified teachers; text books and other learning materials; and supporting management and supervision services.

As well, less than one-third of the students enrolled are actually completing school. Ministry of Education statistics show that only 30 percent of the pupils who started primary 1 in 2003 sat for Primary Leaving Examinations in 2009.

Another challenge is large class sizes. UPPET-driven enrollment expansion has resulted in a critical shortage of classroom spaces, according to Mr. Fortunate Ahimbisibwe, also at the Ministry of Education. By 2007, 243 out of 791 schools participating in UPPET had class sizes of more than 80 students.

“There are not enough textbooks,” Ahimbisibwe said. “The project aims to alleviate some of these pressures in the system,” he said.

To meet the challenges, the government is adopting additional measures under the UPPET program:

• Optimization of teachers’ time on task
• Greater utilization of classrooms through double shifts
• Low-cost construction norms
• Rationalization and reduction of subjects in the curriculum
• Capacity development for school managers
• Strengthening the partnership with the private sector
• Improved school inspections

The Government of Uganda is the premier financier of UPPET. Additional financial contributions are provided by the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Embassy of Belgium, the German Technical Assistance Agency (GTZ), Irish Aid, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

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