{UAH} After 30 years, our youth need action, not rhetoric
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COMMENTARY
After 30 years, our youth need action not words
By Joseph Ochieno
Posted Saturday, August 15 2015 at 01:00
Posted Saturday, August 15 2015 at 01:00
The reported speech by General Yoweri Museveni during his recent trip to northern Uganda cannot go unchallenged. The Red Pepper of July 23, carried a headline, " Government plans to develop technical education - M7", in which Museveni claimed that his government would set up technical schools in every constituency in order to equip the youth with skills.
Being an apparent campaign tour in every sense but name and, coming on the heels of continued challenge on his authority from within his own NRA/NRM as manifested most recently by his former strongman Amama Mbabazi, the rush to flash new rounds of empty promises is perhaps understandable.
But that as it may, considering the plight of the majority of the youth in Uganda, with unemployment within their ranks at over 83 per cent, making promises out of context is patronizing, more humiliation and a rub with more salty sand.
First, majority unemployment in Uganda is not necessarily about skills (alone) but rather, lack of opportunities and real jobs! There are skilled, young graduates -including teachers, nurses and even doctors - who have lived and struggled for years without proper jobs - in Uganda.
Graduates who have been forced to seek work abroad - including as maids - simply because there are either no jobs at home or in a some cases, they do not belong or do not know people in the right places.
Second, and most hollow, for a gentleman who is supposedly the 'custodian' of vision in Uganda to realise that building and equipping technical institutions is of import - after all these years- raises further questions, especially in view of the supposed promise to build a new technical institution per parliamentary constituency.
To illustrate with some basic sense, I draw the readers and Gen Museveni to what real visionaries do and did. After the 1980 general election, which he lost and opted for a terror war in Luweero, the UPC government, within two years, committed and founded a post-primary institution per sub-county.
In my own constituency alone, I might cite but just a few; Barinyanga Technical School, Paya Secondary School, Kisoko High School, Kirewa Secondary School, Rubongi Secondary School, Mahanga Secondary School, Mulanda TTC (formerly part of Tororo South Central Constituency) and National Teachers College, Nagongera. Paya and Nagongera sub-counties got two institutions each.
Within a few years of NRA/NRM, Mulanda TTC was closed.
Within a few years of NRA/NRM, Mulanda TTC was closed.
While National Teachers College, Nagongera was transferred to its new site and relatively constructed (thanks to the hard work of director, Obbo Makola RIP), the rest of the institutions remain in makeshift sites.
For Ugandans of Tororo extraction and, anyone else who has visited these places, just consider this; these institutions were supposed to have been built, equipped, staffed and stocked like their national equivalents of the time.
Barinyanga Technical Institute was to be at per with Kyambogo or for that matter, Elgon Technical. Mulanda TTC was to have been equivalent to Kaliro or perhaps, Shimoni TTC (for those who remember the site).
Mahanga Secondary School was to have looked like Tororo Girls or at least, Bukedi College, Kachonga.
From only these few institutions (one constituency), what would the infrascture outlook be, the resultant jobs and opportunities and the quality of the skilled human products had they been fully and properly completed?
If these few institutions cause challenges for this regime to develop or sustain, how would they found and build hundreds more per 'new constituencies' whose numbers shoot very often?
A few miles along old Tororo Busia Road lies -almost buried - an important institute for research. Uganda Trypanosomiasis Research Organization (UTRO) , once upon a time, a centre for excellence in research and an engine that helped kill sleeping sickness.
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