Government purchases collapsing school at Shs300 million

Buhweju- Karungu Seed Secondary School, about a kilometre from Karungu sub-county headquarters off Buhweju-Ibanda road looks more of a deserted settlement camp than an academic institution.

If you are a stranger, people see you as a philanthropist bringing something to help the school or the students and teachers out of their chronic despair.

The school is connected to the sub-county by a narrow road, which is virtually impassable during the rainy season. The school sits on about six acres at the right hand side of a hill shared between the church and Karungu primary school which surrendered some of its classrooms to the secondary school when it started in 1999.

Karungu Seed SS has three classroom blocks two of which are built of mud and wattle. Other two blocks are under construction funded by parents following the government’s failure to do the works. There is also a staff house for accommodation and two dormitories for boarding students. The schools is not connected to the national electricity grid and runs on solar power, which is used to run two computers available for students to study ICT lessons.

The solar power also provides light for boarding students to read at night.
It has 10 teachers with enrolment of about 300 students.
According to the headteacher, Mr Francis Kyandugirahi, most teachers are posted to the school but they soon ran away due to poor conditions.

This is a school which was bought by government six years ago in what is probably one of the biggest scams in western Uganda in recent history.

Recently, Buhweju Resident District Commissioner Emmy Kateera promised to petition the Inspector General of Government (IGG) to investigate the suspected cost exaggeration of Karungu Seed SS bought by government in 2010 in which government might have paid money far above the school value in the excess of Shs300m.

He said government acquired the school from the proprietors but the structures are in shambles. Part of the land on which the school sits is also under dispute with individuals. He said a school had more than 450 students at the time of government takeover but the enrollment has dropped to below 300 due to poor conditions.

“There is no way government can lose such amount of money and we as government project monitors keep quiet. We need a serious investigation,” Mr Kateera told Sunday Monitor.
The school hitherto known as Karungu Senior Secondary School, was started in 1999 by eight private developers. Government bought it in 2010 as part of the national plan to establish a secondary school in every sub-county.

Karungu Seed SS in Ntoboora B cell was sold to government between 2008 and 2010 but the valuers took photos of a different school to inflate the value of the school and rip-off government.

Pictures of a different school, believed to be Kitagata Secondary School in the neighbouring Sheema District, with better infrastructure were taken and presented as purported representation of Karungu Seed SS. On the basis of the submitted infrastructure images, government bought the school at an inflated valuation , which led to the ministry neglecting the school after finding out the rip-off.

The school of about 300 students operates in dilapidated structures unfit to accommodate even goats.
Stakeholders in the sub-county have petitioned several authorities but to no avail.

In August 2015, the parents and students protested against government neglect of the school.
The stakeholders held an emergency meeting at the school premises to forge a way forward, but nothing significant has been done.

The headmaster, Mr Kyandugirahi, who was posted to the school in 2013, said the former school directors entered a purchase deal with government through Bushenyi local government because Buhweju was still under Bushenyi District. The then Bushenyi District officials represented the government in the deal.

According to the headmaster’s records, the sale agreement entered on 21 April 2009 between the Ministry of Education and Sports representing the government of Uganda (purchaser) and Board of Directors of Karungu Senior Secondary School (vendor). It reads in part: “The vendor hereby agrees to sell and the purchaser hereby agrees to buy the land for which the purchaser shall pay the full purchase price of the sum of Shs326,910,000.”

The agreement was signed by the permanent secretary Ministry of Education and sports as the purchaser whose names were not written, Mr Kyaga Alfred as a witness and Ms Rukundo Expedito, as a vendor and chairman of Board of Directors Karungu SSS, all in the presence of Mr Katsigazi Evadio as board member and witness.

On June 30, 2010, the then Karungu SSS headmaster, Mr Tinkabire Willyson, wrote to the permanent secretary of ministry of Education, saying he had been advised by ministry of Finance officials who came to the school on an evaluation exercise, to hand over the school’s land title to the office of the permanent secretary of ministry of Education, which he did. The team advised that the Ministry of Education makes evaluation of the school and issue a report.

The first valuation report released in 2008, which was given to the directors, put the school worth at Shs61m. However, another valuation was reportedly done which revised the school worth to Shs326.9m. That’s how government was fleeced.

Mr Henry Tuhirirwe, a retired senior education officer, said everything in the transaction was inflated and the Shs326.9m agreed upon was maintained as the original value, raising questions why the value shot up yet the school had ramshackle structures.

“I saw the school being established in 1999 and I provided one building to be used since I was the headmaster of Karungu Primary School. During the transactions between the school proprietors and the government, some pictures were taken from a different school purported to be Kitagata Secondary School in Sheema whereby the pictures presented showed Karungu Secondary School with beautiful structures which was totally different from what was taking place at the original site in Buhweju,” he told Sunday Monitor

More lies
He said the pictures also showed that the school had a lorry when in fact it did not even have a bicycle. The school kept operating until 2011/2012 when it was discovered that Karungu Seed SS was a skeleton school, prompting the World Bank to indefinitely suspend the construction project Phase 3 for the school. The construction project has never resumed.

However, Mr Vincent Gumisiriza, one of the former directors, said the government sent the valuation officers who assessed the school’s assets and gave their verdict.

“The government valuing officers did not bargain. They came and valued what was at school and transactions were done appropriately and the file that contains everything was taken to the Education ministry. We handed everything to the school since it was then a government property,” said Mr Gumisiriza
Another former director, Mr Isaac Rubafunya, advised the stakeholders to first explore the legal process involved in sale of the school to avoid inconveniencies. He did not elaborate.

Mr Rukundo Expedito, the former chairman of the school board, who signed the deal and is currently the councillor representing the sub-county at the district, refused to comment on the issue. He only said the government has neglected the school.

“We sold the school to government at a worthwhile price. Whoever brings issues of inflated price has some other hidden agenda,” Mr Rukundo told Sunday Monitor last week.

Silence on the issue
“As sub-county leadership, it’s now more than two years ever since we began raising this issue in the district meetings. It has been suspended from district meetings and we wonder what is going to happen,” said Ms Mable Kekaramu, the Karungu sub-county woman councillor in the district council.

“Since the government has earmarked the construction of new mapped seed schools, we request that Karungu Seed Secondary School be considered this financial year as a state of emergency,” reads a letter Karungu stakeholders wrote to the President on August 6, 2015, telling him that the school classrooms were in a state of collapse. They further said some structures built by the parents were incomplete and inadequate.

Almost everything is lacking at the school; classrooms, an administrative block, a science lab, library, computer lab, staff houses and furniture.

Buhweju District education officer Beatrice Tusiime said the former proprietors and the then district officials should explain what happened.

The school PTA vice chairman, Mr David Swendere, called for a special investigation into the school takeover by the government to establish whether there was collusion and a rip-off against government.

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