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Survey reveals spike in school dropouts, alcohol consumption

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The most startling revelation of the report of the survey was that Ugandans were spending at least 6 out of every 100 shillings they
earned every month on the purchase of alcohol and tobacco.. PHOTO/FILE

Thirty one years ago last month, it emerged that huge sections of the population of Uganda, frustrated by the economic hardships in the country, had taken to consumption of huge volumes of alcohol as millions of children were dropping out of school.
According to an edition of the Monitor newspaper of December 3, 1993, this was occurring at a time when the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) government was boasting of having performed economic miracles.

The statistics of increased alcoholics and school drop-outs were contained in a pioneer report of the household budget survey. 
The survey was conducted by the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.
According to the paper, “The Role of Household Surveys in Poverty Reduction Efforts: A Case of the Uganda National Household Survey Programme”, which was published in volume 3 of the African Statistical Journal, which came out in November 2006, the Household Budget Survey (HBS), conducted from April 1989 to March 1990 was the first detailed household expenditure survey conducted in Uganda since the 1960s.

The main objective of the survey, the paper states, was to provide basic data needed to revise the Consumer Price Index and data for improving estimates of the household final consumption expenditure component of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) using the expenditure approach.
The paper further revealed that the first large scale Integrated Household Survey (IHS), which was conducted in 1992 was a multi-subject inquiry with the main objective of providing a complete dataset needed to understand the mechanisms and effects of the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), to fill the socio-economic data gaps and to provide base-line data relating to key economic indicators used in development planning.
SAPs were a series of economic reforms that countries were required to implement as a prerequisite to accessing loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Uganda started implementing SAPs in 1987.

Some of the SAPs implemented at the time included the devaluation of the shilling by 77 percent in a major currency reform that saw new currency notes introduced, a reduction in government expenditure and opening up to free trade.
Cover up
The newspaper, however reported that the outcomes of the survey, the first to have been conducted by government statisticians, had not been given publicity probably because the figures would contradict the NRM’s claims of success in as far as growing the economy was concerned.
The numbers
The survey shows that an average Ugandan family at the time spent about Shs34,468 in 1990.
The figures, the newspaper noted, would flatter peasant communities in both eastern and northern Uganda where economies had been grossly affected by civil wars.

The earliest insurgency in eastern Uganda began in 1986. Charles Korokoto and Nelson Omwero led rebels of the Force Obote Back Again (FOBA) into combat operations against the National Resistance Army (NRA), now Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF).
In 1987 the Uganda People’s Army (UPA) also began fighting the NRA in the Teso region. UPA was reportedly protesting the NRM government’s decision to disband militia’s that had been protecting them from attacks from marauding Karamojong warriors. 
That left the region open to attacks that saw it lose cattle.
Around the same time, the government was battling rebels of the Holy Spirit Movement of Alice Lakwena. After her defeat and flight into exile in October 1987, remnants of her force joined up with others to form the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA led by Joseph Kony, which remained active in the north.

Alcohol spend
The most startling revelation of the report of the survey however, was that Ugandans were spending at least 6 out of every 100 shillings they earned every month on the purchase of alcohol and tobacco.
That was far much more than they were spending on the education of their children. The report showed that they were spending only Shs2 out of every 100 shillings earned on education.
The paper quoted researchers at Uganda’s most prestigious university, Makerere, blaming the increased disparity between alcohol consumption and the rate of school drop-outs on pressure and a general state of hopelessness.
Mr Frank Mbaaga, a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Sociology was quoted giving a sociological explanation to the effect that the general consumption of alcohol was to related to problems and hopelessness.
“There is so little money to invest in profit making ventures. That is why (whatever little) money (available) is invested in social drinking” Mr Mbaaga said.

At the time, tales that some village boys, who were just breaking into their teen ages, were increasingly taking to the bottle after dropping out of school were rife.
Figures that were released to the Monitor by the Director General of the Uganda AIDS Commission, Emmanuel Pinto, indicated that only 2.2 million of 6.5 children that were of school-going age were attending school. That left a mind boggling 4.3 million or 70 percent of those that should have been in school out there.
Pinto was the first director general of the Uganda Aids Commission. He served as a Cabinet minister and Member of Parliament for Kakuto County in Rakai. The man who was once Chief Scout of Uganda died in April 2008 of injuries sustained in a freak motor accident at his home.
According to the newspaper, it was part of that 70 percent who could be seen herding cattle in Rukungiri, pruning vanilla in Kyaggwe (Mukono), rustling cattle in Karamoja or providing child labour on sugarcane plantations that were coming up in Busoga region.
The smarter ones, the newspaper said, had opted to migrate to the capital Kampala and other urban centres like Jinja where some had become touts or petty thieves. That migration is said to have been partially responsible for the increase in the number of street children.

Useless education system
The newspaper noted that the increase in the school drop-out rates was being blamed on an education system that was increasingly being viewed as useless. Most people, especially those in the rural areas, the newspaper noted, had lost interest in education because they were no longer seeing their children get jobs as had been the case in the past.
The paper said that President Museveni had for quite a while then been saying that Ugandans were not paying enough taxes or that taxes were high mostly because they were based on assumed incomes or simply determined on the basis of age as was the case with graduated tax. The President had been quoted to have concluded that this had served to raise the cost of living and impoverish the people.

Matters, the newspaper noted, were not being helped by the fact that the shrinking civil service could no longer absorb the 2,000 graduates that Makerere was annually offloading onto the job market.
The newspaper noted that while the government could at the time claim that it had sustained economic growth at the rate of 5 percent over the previous three years, the fact was that most Ugandans were not feeling that growth because they were living in squalor.
Quoting the report of the survey, the newspaper noted that in northern Uganda at the time, an average family was spending about Shs18,000 out of a meagre monthly average of Shs25,000 on food, leaving the rest, Shs7000, to cater for medicare, implements, fuel, recreation and alcohol.
The people in the north were at the same time discovered to have been spending the least on education and more on alcohol than those of any other part of Uganda.

While average household expenditure topped at Shs40,000 in central and Shs37,000 in western Uganda, every month, the north and east averaged on Shs24,000.
The household budget survey also showed that the national average expenditure on foodstuffs stood at Shs64 out of every 100 spent by a family per month. That worked out at about Shs22,000 per month per family.
The newspaper concluded that the grim figures were making it increasingly difficult to relate to the growth. NRM politicians, the paper noted, would have to come up with new ways of politicking.