Parliament grapples with sex education subject

Should school going children be taught sex education? At what age is a child mentally ready to be subjected to sex education? And how far should it go? Should a child even be allowed to access a smart-phone?
Those were the questions that Parliament struggled with this week after literature that was considered gross was found on the library shelves of the Buwaate campus of Greenhill Academy, an upscale private school.

Displeased by the literature, MPs on the Education Committee made an unannounced visit to the campus and confiscated some of the literature. Management of Greenhill Academy was expected to appear before the Education Committee on Thursday, but they did not show up. Another date is yet to be set for them.

Some of the titles the MPs found on the shelves would make for intriguing reading; A Kiss Like This For Primarily One, Girl Power, In The Night Garden, Now You Are One, The King Of Thieves and Juliet The Valentine Fairy.

MPs were moving fast and were furious as on Wednesday Amuru Woman MP Lucy Akello moved a motion to ask government to withdraw the policy on sex education.

The motion largely sailed through with little resistance, putting the ball in government’s court to act on sex education on the primary school curriculum.

Sex talk is naturally a contentious issue. And in Uganda, any talk on sex is incomplete without reference to homosexuality and the civil society, which is usually blamed for propagating sex education to gullible, poor schools eager to make ends meet using donor money.

Ms Akello said donors compile such curricula without consulting local stakeholders, saying traditional measures of sex education should be the way to go.

“In Africa, we have ways of educating our children about matters relating to sex without compromising our values. For example, in Buganda, through the initiative of the Queen [Nnabagereka] where during holiday’s young girls and boys assemble and they are taught how to be responsible mothers and children,” Ms Akello said.

Butambala County MP Muwanga Kivumbi dragged the CSOs into the debate when he suggested that some CSOs called MPs and intimidated them against supporting the motion, warning that the supporters of the motion risked being denied visas.

In May, this newspaper reported that about 100 schools had been duped into training disguised homosexuality to their teachers and students.
In that scandal, lessons taught were as gross as portraying homosexuality and masturbation as fulfilling sexual attributes among people who have consented and one way of controlling unwanted teenage pregnancies and early marriages.

Speaker Rebecca Adage talked of how Denmark duped the Education ministry by supplying books on homosexuality, again poking holes in the vetting of books and the inspection of schools.

“When we were in the 7th Parliament, UWOPA received books from Denmark. We had gone to a meeting in Denmark and they said these are books for your country and as we were browsing, we discovered that the books were about homosexuality. We come back here and the books were withdrawn. That means that our sieving system does not exist,” Ms Kadaga said.

With the motion passed to withdraw the policy on sex education from schools, the next course of action will be with the Education ministry to crack down on schools that still have such teachings on their curricula.

Prime Ministers’ Question
One grey area in Parliament remains how to go about the Prime Ministers’ Question (PMQs) time.

Modelled on the Westminster format, Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, just as the case in the House of Commons, should appear before MPs on Wednesday and randomly give responses to quick-fire questions.

But Mr Rugunda is not happy with the formant and wants the questions sent to him in advance to enable him prepare “comprehensive” responses, far different from what PMQs are envisaged to be.

Those against the idea of giving written questions in advance know very well the problems of backlog at Parliament. Questions for written responses are not given priority by ministers. Petitions drag on in committees, making it counterproductive to pile more questions with the Prime Minister.

Opponents of Rugunda’s suggestion validly argue that such questions will further increase the backlog of unanswered responses to the government.

But the Catch 22 situation is that with the hollow responses that the Prime Minister sometimes gives to MPs, finding a way of improving the PMQs should be food for thought for Parliament’s Rules Committee when it embarks on amending the rules of procedure.

No more new roads
Roads are cherished to MPs. A poor road in a constituency can easily cost an MP a seat.

And so the announcement by Uganda National Roads Authority executive director Allen Kagina that there will be no more new roads other than ongoing road works this financial year sent shockwaves.

Shadow Works minister William Nzonghu (Busongora North) presented a statement demanding that Works minister Monica Azuba Ntege explain which roads will be closed and when they works will resume.
Ms Ntege, making her maiden speech in the House, clarified that all ongoing road works will not be affected, calming MPs worry that their constituencies might be affected.

If Speaker Kadaga was in combative mood last week, she was the opposite this week as she told MPs that they will each bag Shs150m in October to buy heavy duty cars.

The issue of cars had put Parliament at a collision course with the government after the Finance ministry refused to include the Shs64b in the budget on grounds that the Parliament Commission had overshot its expenditure.

If it comes with making odd requests. This week MPs Hillary Lokwang (Ik County) and John Baptist Nambeshe (Manjiya County) demanded that Parliament puts in place measures to allow MPs easily cross from Development House to access the precincts of Parliament.

They either want a zebra crossing, pedestrian flyover (footbridge), barriers or traffic officer guiding traffic on Parliament Avenue – the road that separates Development House from Parliament.

As the House waits for a statement on the loans passed by lawmakers since the 9th Parliament, government continues to table more loan requests. This week, there were two requests to borrow up to $150 million (Shs500 billion) from the International Development Association of the World Bank group to support the Agriculture Cluster Development Project.

There was another request to borrow up to $11 million (Shs37 billion) from the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development to finance the construction of the 33kv and 11kv power distribution project in six districts of Uganda namely; Kiryandongo, Kibaale, Nebbi, Bushenyi, Kasese and Rukungiri.

BUSINESS TO FOLLOW
Ministerial statements on:
lFood security situation in the country
lDelivery of seeds to farmers in Adjumani District
lSecurity situation in the country (West Nile region)
lOccupation and safety of workers in the country
lLoans passed by MPs since the 9th Parliament.