{UAH} Taking services to the people

"But I am the president and it's not good to go empty-handed when I visit after a long time".Mr. Museveni

The president is a captive of his own precedent of doling out cash envelopes, instead of addressing the dysfunctional system of public service delivery. Bigger proportion of Ugandans when asked complain about the government's lackluster response in addressing problems in social services such as education, healthcare, water and infrastructure.

Service delivery in most parts of the country is on drip and the situation is exacerbated by massive levels of corruption. In the health sector alone many health facilities that are under staffed especially those in the rural areas, lack drugs, staff absenteeism is chronic. Patients are left at the mercies of God or alternatively dispose of assets to seek treatment in expensive private clinics normally owned by a government official.

The education sector is also gravely affected by this vice of corruption. Same disease of understaffing in most of these public schools with so many pupils, absenteeism of teachers without genuine reasons, poor performance of pupils, abolition of teacher parents association has created a reluctance of parents to take part in school programs, mismanagement of school funds among others.

Part of problem is that Museveni finds it convenient to dole out brown envelopes because it's a tool for longevity power besides suffocating the rural masses from information about government functions and service delivery, in other wards it's easy to rule over uninformed citizens because they will be dependent on you as their god.

This tendency to dish out to the citizens has fostered corruption because every elected leader is pressurized to curve a living outside the normal rules just to emulate a president who doles out money to the electorate. The elected leaders have therefore opted to abandon their oversight roles of monitoring service delivery from the executive level to the districts and decided to partake in corruption instead of exposing the failures in service delivery.

This culture of receiving has also denied  the rural folks the chance to build capacity to demand better services from their leadership and expose the endemic level of corruption and embezzlement in Museveni`s regime, because they fear the hands that embezzle to feed them. 

http://atoconatyekwo.blogspot.nl/2015/06/taking-services-to-people.html

Atocon Moses Atyekwo mosesatocon@msn.com @twitter: @AtyekwoM Skype:Atomose