District Creation Morotorium/Suspension

lo and behold, I bring you good tidings; that President Yoweri Museven has directed the minister of local government(Adolf Mwesige) to table a motion in parliament withdrawing the earlier proposed 25 new districts!!!????? Which would have brought to a whooping 137 the number of districts in Uganda and yet the minister's own constituency was/is among the 25 would be districts!!!???? And Mr Museveni realizes and admits that Infrastructure and service delivery is more important than turning every county into a district!!! At last, the voice of reason is being heard over sentiment and false pride. 

Fort Portal, the area MP Alex Ruhunda said it was a tug of  war to convince President Yoweri Museveni to impose a moratorium on the creation of new districts after assessing the performance and impact of the districts  which were created over the last decade. The MPs used an anology of a married couple producing more children yet the few or many they already have are suffering from Mal-nutrition and can't have the basic needs.

The cost of soaring public administration has always been too high and actually, an I think that even half of the 112 districts so far created after the NRM government came to power in 1986, ought to be merged and the resources channeled into  real service delivery by buying and equipping third world secondary schools with Laboratory equipment and other gadgets, diagnostic equipment  medicine and recruitment and retention of health workers who are well paid in hospitals. It is actually the bureaucracy that has been benefiting from the district extra-vaganza all along and one wonders why it took so long to see this! The President  is said to have made the observation while meeting district officials from Kanungu who had gone to lobby for the splitting of their very district to get a creation of Kihiihi which was to be cut off from the mother district of kanungu which was itself cut off from Rukungiri district shortly after Joseph kibwetere and his accomplices burnt to death an estimated 1000 belivers waiting for the virgin Mary to witness the end of the world in 2000(sorry I digress) . 

That Kasese was or is to give birth to 2 more districts of Rwenzori and Busongora which would have consumed about 120 Billion UGX to kick start and their demarcations almost certainly  drawn along ethnic lines, yet this money would be better spent on Health, education, roads and general infrastructural development for kasese and Rwenzori region as a whole and provide real services to the people and forge unity in diversity instead of polarizing the country along ethnic lines. How about using the that revenue for providing a cup of Milk for each of our Universal Primary/Secondary Education  pupils or buying sanitary pads for the girl child since it has been proved to be one of the reasons of high girl child absentism and school drop out!!??

Often times, I visit Fort Portal Regional Referral Hospital-FPRRH and I find a note on the X-RAY unit; OUT OF ORDER No FILMS or some other vital component missing, and yet this is a referral hospital serving 7 districts of kasese, Kamwenge, Bundibugyo, Ntoroko, Kyenjojo, Kamwenge and Kabarole. How about procuring such diagnostic equipment for our health units?

One of my all time classic song which was done by Anne Murray titles a Little Good News has lyrics that I like; that how I would love to open a newspaper or tune to tv or radio and the news is that there was no fighting hostility between Israel and her neighbors and that there was no bomb blast in Waziristan, Syria or Afghanistan. A little good news indeed. God is great indeed....Allahu akbaru...Laudeto Yesus Kristus

Radio show fixes a road badly done as a result of corruption in Kasese District

A radio talkshow called “The Mirror” on Guide FM in Kasese district has helped fix Bwera – Mitimusanju Road in Kasese District. The road was impassable even after repair due to shoddy work. According to the moderator of the live talkshow Kahungu Thembo, the contractor had connived with the district engineer to approve a shoddy work in September, 2012. The live radio talkshow is broadcast every Friday of the week from 05 – 06pm.

“The issue of Bwera – Mitimusanju Road was always raised on the talkshow [The Mirror] through phone calls and SMS and we decided to take a radio debate there which forced the district leadership to sack the district engineer [James Atuhaire] and the road was re-done by the contractors at their own costs.” Said Kahungu Thembo of Guide FM.

This follows ToroDev training on broadcasting for accountability in November 2012 to help rural FM radio journalists improve participation on their accountability radio programs through the use of appropriate ICT tools like SMS and call-ins and other online tools like facebook and twitter to share and access information. The training also encouraged radio journalists to make follow-ups on service delivery issues raised by the local citizens and conduct more research to enable them hold factual and issue based discussions to improve accountability.

While assessing the impact of ToroDev interventions on broadcasting for accountability on 14^th March, 2013 at Guide FM in Kasese District Kahungu highlighted that as a result of the capacity building workshops conducted by ToroDev, Guide FM has improved broadcasting for accountability through more support to radio journalists conduct research and embraced the use of appropriate ICT tools to increased participation of the local communities in the radio discussions among others.

“It’s now a policy for radio journalists to always have scripts before going for any program. Guide FM is also conducting on-job training especially for interns and new staff. Management has also allocated UGX120,000 a month for journalists to conduct research and UGX30,000 for airtime coordination. The manager has also given a directive to every radio program to have a facebook page” Said Kahungu Thembo of Guide FM.

Kahungu however highlighted that although the radio has allocated some funds for conducting research and coordination to enable fruitful issue based discussions, the funds are not yet enough. The radio staff also faces intimidation from local politicians and civil servants for reporting issues of shoddy work and corruption. 

During the impact assessment visit, ToroDev staff also distributed copies of the Uganda Constitution, Local Government Act and the Access to Information Act to empower local FM radio journalists with the legal framework to help them in their discussions and information access especially from the local governments.

Rwenzori journalists trained in mentorship to improve public accountability broadcasting

Thirty one radio journalists from the Rwenzori Region based FM radio stations have been trained in mentorship so as to improve broadcasting for public accountability. The three days residential training held between 26^th to 28^th November, 2012 attracted journalists from Better FM, Voice of Toro (VOB), Gold FM, Life FM and Hits FM in Fort Portal, Guide FM and Messiah FM in Kasese, Voice of Bundibugyo (VOB) and Bundibugyo FM in Bundibugyo district and Kyenjojo Development Radio (KDR) and Kyenjojo FM in Kyenjojo district.

John Matovu of PANOS training radio journalists in mentorship

The training which was organized by Toro Development Network (ToroDev) in partnership with Rwenzori Journalist Forum (RJF) was facilitated by Lucy Ekadu from Uganda Journalist Union, Henry Tumwine from Uganda Pentecostal University and John Matovu from PANOS Estern Africa.

The mentorship training was intended to identify challenges and good practices among radio staff through sharing experiences on public accountability broadcasting for learning purposes, to improve mentorship skills of radio journalists and to strengthen journalist forums for improved advocacy on public accountability and service delivery broadcasting.

The participants who included news editors, program directors and public accountability program moderators were encouraged to use the skills to mentor their junior staff so as to improve public accountability broadcasting.

ToroDev in partnership with RJF will encourage mentors to submit monthly reports sharing their experiences regarding activities, challenges, success stories on public accountability broadcasting. Their experiences will be shared on http://rwenzorijournalistforum.blogspot.com/  to enable improved advocacy and learning. In addition, RJF and ToroDev will also conduct media conferences, field tours and exchange visits all aimed at sharing knowledge and empowering radio journalists on public accountability broadcasting.

The mentorship program will help improve participation of rural people in government planning and budgetary processes, monitoring service delivery, demanding accountability because the radio journalists have been empowered with skills to mainstream the voices of multiple stakeholders including the civil society, rural youth and women in governance processes.

ToroDev focused on empowering radio journalists in public accountability broadcasting because FM radio fits well with the lifestyle of many rural people in the Rwenzori Region, Western Uganda since it can easily broadcast in many local languages, people can listen to it while walking or working. Radio is also a popular media channel accessed by over 90 percent of the rural people.

The mentorship training follows another training earlier this year on public accountability broadcasting http://torodev.blogspot.com/2012/05/rwenzori-region-journalists-form-forum.html

Importance of ICT's especially FM radio's in Governance

The Uganda National ICT policy (2003) clearly explains the importance of access and use of the ICT tools to the local citizens. It highlights the potential of ICT tools to improve delivery of development services, transparency and governance through availability of public domain, particularly rural citizens [pg. 9]. However, the rural women and youth who comprise 70 percent of the total population in 7 districts of the Rwenzori region, face serious manipulation, and many times, intimidated to access public information and knowledge sharing on democratic dialogue and monitoring public accountability for improved service delivery from their political leaders. This is because of ignorance (local citizen not knowing what resources belong to them), illiteracy, and conservative cultures limiting women in decision making and demanding information concerning service delivery, economic dependency and poverty to access ICT tools like computers and the internet based tools, TVs and skills training.

Due to years of inadequate good governance traits based on transparency, engagement of local citizens in determining their priority needs and vigorously demanding public accountability without fear in Uganda, there has been tremendous manipulation and wastage of public resources. Transparency International ranks Uganda among the most corrupt countries in the world (TI Corruption Index 2011), while World Bank according to its 2010 Report estimates that between 500 to 700 billion Ugandan shillings is lost in corruption annually. Yet, the same amount of money is estimated to construct 50 modern hospitals to improve rural healthcare or 20 medium scale agro-processing industries to employ at least 100,000 jobless youth per year and increase exports of valued-added products. The same amount of money can build 100 modern secondary schools or construct 1,250 kilometers of tarmac roads to ease transport for rural agribusiness entrepreneurs to access better markets in urban centers, attract more foreign investors and ease access to health facilities for rural citizens particularly expectant mothers, to mention but a few. This trend of misappropriation of public resources has a negative impact on the Uganda National Development Plan (April, 2010), which desires to transform the Ugandan society from peasantry into a modern, industrious and prosperous one within the next 30 years. Interestingly, the same National Development Plan also acknowledges that there is serious lack of modern ICT skills and knowledge in the population that would propel local citizens to engage government for social economic development, especially in the rural areas (pg. 126), which this project specifically targets.

Being largely a subsistence agricultural population characterized by low incomes, FM radio fits well with the lifestyle of many people in Uganda and becomes a “hub” for converging all other sources/tools of information access for improved monitoring of service delivery. It is a popular media channel because it does not require electricity, and because people can listen to the radio while they work or walk. By broadcasting in local languages, radio goes a long way in addressing the information needs of the local citizens, especially on service delivery.