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Let’s appoint, train new RDCs and chief administrative officers
“Therefore, for the district leaders from the central government, like the RDCs and the chief administrative officers (CAOs), we should get a crop of new people, train and appoint them as CAOs, deputy CAOs, RDCs and deputy RDCs,” writes Moses Byaruhanga
Moses Byaruhanga. (File)
By: Admin ., Journalist @New Vision
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OPINION
By Moses Byaruhanga
Recently, I wrote about the good work minister Balaam Barugahara is doing in fighting corruption in the local governments. I also pointed out many other areas we need to look at in order to improve service delivery.
I reminded the reader that under decentralisation, many services that were hitherto under the central government were put under the local governments: districts, cities and municipalities.
The services include recruitment of civil servants, primary education, district roads, rural water services, health up to the district hospital and agricultural extension. Barugahara has found a lot of rot in the districts he has so far covered, and even in those districts he has covered, he has not had enough time to examine how all the decentralised services are performing.
When he was in Sironko district, he found out that there were 40,000 ghost students in primary schools and over 2,000 in secondary schools. The inflation of learners in schools is done by the headteachers in connivance with the district education officers and the inspectors of schools. This is done because the capitation grant, which the finance ministry sends to the districts, is calculated per learner at 20,000 annually. This is not money from which to pay teachers, as the teachers’ salaries are sent separately.
The capitation grant, as it is called, is for cleaning the school premises, buying chalk and paying a security guard. Buying of scholastic materials like textbooks and desks, among others, is a different budget all together. For Sironko, from the 40,000 ghost learners, the district has been getting sh800m annually to be ‘eaten’ by the headteachers and the officials at the district who they work with. For the secondary students, the schools have been getting over sh350m annually.
This Sironko district has leaders like the district education officer, the inspector of schools, the chief administrative officer, district and sub-county councillors, sub-county and district chairpersons, deputy resident district commissioners (RDCs) and the full RDC.
What is happening in Sironko is happening in other districts. Therefore, for the district leaders from the central government, like the RDCs and the chief administrative officers (CAOs), we should get a crop of new people, train and appoint them as CAOs, deputy CAOs, RDCs and deputy RDCs. There is nothing Barugahara is finding out which is outside the mandate of the CAO and RDC to have found out and stopped long ago.
While districts like Sironko have been getting over sh1b annually in capitation grants for ghost learners, like in other areas, they charge some fees to students in government schools, which is illegal. Headteachers claim that they use these extra charges to pay teachers who are not on the government payroll.
The capitation grant, as it is called, is for cleaning the school premises, buying chalk and paying a security guard. Buying of scholastic materials like textbooks and desks, among others, is a different budget all together. For Sironko, from the 40,000 ghost learners, the district has been getting sh800m annually to be ‘eaten’ by the headteachers and the officials at the district who they work with. For the secondary students, the schools have been getting over sh350m annually.
This Sironko district has leaders like the district education officer, the inspector of schools, the chief administrative officer, district and sub-county councillors, sub-county and district chairpersons, deputy resident district commissioners (RDCs) and the full RDC.
What is happening in Sironko is happening in other districts. Therefore, for the district leaders from the central government, like the RDCs and the chief administrative officers (CAOs), we should get a crop of new people, train and appoint them as CAOs, deputy CAOs, RDCs and deputy RDCs. There is nothing Barugahara is finding out which is outside the mandate of the CAO and RDC to have found out and stopped long ago.
While districts like Sironko have been getting over sh1b annually in capitation grants for ghost learners, like in other areas, they charge some fees to students in government schools, which is illegal. Headteachers claim that they use these extra charges to pay teachers who are not on the government payroll.
In my recent article, I pointed out that every year, districts return funds to the Treasury in the form of unspent wage, meaning that they had money to recruit staff but they did not recruit them. In Sironko, the unspent wage in the last three financial years was as follows: 2023/24, sh14m; in 2024/25 it was sh1.3b, and in 2025/26 it was sh785m.
The district service commission is responsible for the recruitment of staff in the districts, so what explanation does Sironko have for failure to recruit staff like teachers and return unspent wage? From Sironko, Barugahara went to Tororo, where unspent wages in the last three financial years are as follows: 2023/24, sh3.5b; 2024/25, sh3.9b; 2025/26, sh6b! So does Tororo have a CAO? Why should the district return wages due to failure to recruit? What does the chairperson, who is elected by the people who suffer from lack of enough teachers, nurses, think about his district, which is failing to recruit staff?
In the National Resistance Movement manifesto, in whose writing I participated, we proposed that we need to use information technology (IT) in the fight against corruption. On this issue of ghost pupils, yes, headcount is useful, like Barugahara is doing, but that cannot be done all the time. We should use IT to solve the problem once and for all. Like adults have national identity cards, we should facilitate the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) to register all children so that every learner has a unique identification number with their biometrics taken.
That way, a headteacher cannot claim to have learners that they do not have because, for all the learners a school declares, their identification numbers have to be run in the system to check if that person is in the NIRA data base. Remember when the permanent secretary at the finance ministry tasked the Auditor General with auditing the public servants and getting their bio data from NIRA; so many ghost civil servants were found and eliminated from the payroll. We should be able to use IT in many areas to eliminate corruption.
In my last article, I also pointed out that the Ministry of Health has instituted an IT system that tracks medicines from the National Medical Stores up to the patient at the health unit. However, it has not yet been rolled out to all the health units, especially the health centres III at sub county level. The system also tracks attendance of the staff.
However, the ministry has no power to discipline the absentee workers. Here we can hold the CAOs who have failed to take action on reports of absenteeism accountable.
The writer is the senior presidential advisor on political affairs, State House
The district service commission is responsible for the recruitment of staff in the districts, so what explanation does Sironko have for failure to recruit staff like teachers and return unspent wage? From Sironko, Barugahara went to Tororo, where unspent wages in the last three financial years are as follows: 2023/24, sh3.5b; 2024/25, sh3.9b; 2025/26, sh6b! So does Tororo have a CAO? Why should the district return wages due to failure to recruit? What does the chairperson, who is elected by the people who suffer from lack of enough teachers, nurses, think about his district, which is failing to recruit staff?
In the National Resistance Movement manifesto, in whose writing I participated, we proposed that we need to use information technology (IT) in the fight against corruption. On this issue of ghost pupils, yes, headcount is useful, like Barugahara is doing, but that cannot be done all the time. We should use IT to solve the problem once and for all. Like adults have national identity cards, we should facilitate the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) to register all children so that every learner has a unique identification number with their biometrics taken.
That way, a headteacher cannot claim to have learners that they do not have because, for all the learners a school declares, their identification numbers have to be run in the system to check if that person is in the NIRA data base. Remember when the permanent secretary at the finance ministry tasked the Auditor General with auditing the public servants and getting their bio data from NIRA; so many ghost civil servants were found and eliminated from the payroll. We should be able to use IT in many areas to eliminate corruption.
In my last article, I also pointed out that the Ministry of Health has instituted an IT system that tracks medicines from the National Medical Stores up to the patient at the health unit. However, it has not yet been rolled out to all the health units, especially the health centres III at sub county level. The system also tracks attendance of the staff.
However, the ministry has no power to discipline the absentee workers. Here we can hold the CAOs who have failed to take action on reports of absenteeism accountable.
The writer is the senior presidential advisor on political affairs, State House