Our growth figures vs 2011 Citizen’s Manifesto

A group of civil society members under Uganda NGO forum converged last week to share experiences of a countrywide research that will eventually culminate in ‘The Citizen’s Manifesto’ and one after another, there were amazing stories especially about the breakdown of service delivery in the country.

Top on the list was about the poor roads, poor health services, poor quality of Universal Primary Education and Universal Secondary Education, poverty, corruption, and many other regional issues. On roads, the people from Hoima for instance shared that in some villages, a kilo of maize goes for Shs100 while a bunch of Matoke goes for Shs1,500 because the journey to the vibrant Kyangwali market that would otherwise take 40 minutes takes over eight hours!

In Sebei region, it is worse because the people in Kwen District have to go through Kenya to access Kapchorwa. A teacher in Kwen District has to go through Kitale and Malaba in order to get to Kapchorwa where he/she can draw his/her salary from a bank. By the time they make it to and from, almost Shs50,000 is off their Shs200,000 monthly pay.

On health, again the group from Sebei shared that currently, there are only five doctors in the three districts of Kapchorwa, Bukwo and Kwen. These doctors were previously in one hospital but with the split of the region into three districts, they have had to split, and moreover, two of the five are now on leave. Someone from Soroti shared that a health centre at Agirigoyi village has turned into a tourist site because a cobra has taken residence in a dysfunctional empty health unit!

The research by NGO Forum only adds credence to the obvious about our service delivery. On health for example, a friend from Soroti said he found a woman lamenting at a hospital gate. She had a dying child; she had been told to buy a syringe which costs Shs2,000 but had only Shs1,000.

Mr Oduman C. Okello, Shadow Minister for Finance, Planning and Economic Development, gives damning details about the state of our health facilities in the ‘Opposition Response to the Government Budget Statement FY 2010/2011’. According to this document, the health sector funding has for the last four years stagnated at 9.6 per cent far below the 15 per cent Abuja Declaration of 2001; 320 people die of malaria everyday; 300,000 have hearing impairments and 250,000 are blind due to preventable diseases; only 40 per cent of the available health equipment is in working condition; there is only one health worker for every 1,298 people as opposed to the recommended one health worker for every 439 people by World Health Organisation. Yet the budget allocation for health for FY 2010/2011 is Shs45.3 billion compared to Shs72.5 billion allocated to State House.

Today, it is estimated that 35-37 per cent of Ugandans live below the poverty line but government continues to trade carefully citing the 2005/2006 figure of 31 per cent. The reason many people are increasingly becoming poor is because of government preoccupation with economic figures that do not necessarily reflect people’s wellbeing.

On improving the people’s wellbeing, civil society recommends in its perspective paper entitled ‘Unlocking Uganda’s Development Potential’ that government substantially invests in agriculture to the tune of 15 per cent of the national budget for the next five years as this would benefit over 70 per cent of the population that live on agriculture.

Ms Wokuri is the interim coordinator, National Alliance for a Free and Fair Election
wokuret@yahoo.com