Conflicts, defiance and strikes in 2016, let cohesion prevail in 2017

Dec 29, 2016

There were lots of student strikes. And secondary school students have learnt the ‘bad’ habits of their university counterparts.

By Simon Mone

The year 2016 has had its good and bad moments. Many people will happily turn the page over to 2017. Strikes, demonstrations and violent conflicts. All these happened for varied reasons and unfortunately, as we closely watched, many fatalities were the result. So yet again, our society has been dragged along the violent path. And many helpless people were left desperate as they rue missing out on even their God-given basics. What a shame!

There were lots of student strikes. And secondary school students have learnt the ‘bad' habits of their university counterparts. They now know strikes might get them to ‘dreamland'. To make it even bad, lecturers and support staff got their bit of the solidarity with their students.

And the oldest university in the country was grounded for two months as a result of the standoff, because government wasn't relenting. ‘Hand over keys', were some of the punctuations to highlight. And the loser has definitely been research. Without quality research, development is handicapped. I am quite sure that funders of important researches will frown at intermittent closures of their projects.

While we all know that quality (be it education, a service, or a product, commensurate costs must give), we ought to depart from defiance and tread the road of compliance, even when at times things don't favour us. In the year 2016, ups and downs were not only limited to schools and universities.

Things came in turns. Today students at it, tomorrow doctors, nurses, taxi drivers and traders, get their chance to show how ‘ugly' they can get. Then you wonder why we should wait for things to escalate to unbelievable extents. On a lighter note, in 2016, we (Uganda) got commended for playing host to civilians fleeing violence from neighboring countries.

It was good and bad. Good because we continuously give solace to new arrivals. At one point, a daily average of 2,500 displaced persons were registered in refugee camps. And bad because it is this type of trouble that always place huge burden on our already limited resources.

Even hand-outs from development partners and aid agencies are not usually enough, let alone sustaining. On to the gist of this matter, you know that whenever conflicts occur, everything is interfered with; food, children dig swamps in search for what should be clean water, to use at home, schooling for children is interrupted and livelihoods for local people are destroyed.

Very importantly, because of congestion in refugee camps, healthcare went amiss. Cases of diarrhea, cholera and malaria hit worrying statistics. So we can comfortably state that conflicts, especially those across borders left multitudes of people to start re-building lost hope.

Now that a lot of damage was done, we don't have many options. Let's live with the problem and hope that one day, people responsible for conflicts eat some sanity tablets and stop fighting. It leads to the important question; if we can all choose to be more accommodative, and harmonious in the New Year? All depends on us.

To us all; (doctors, lecturers, students, traders, teachers, taxi drivers and need I say jobless youths or brotherhood?) with the propensity to go on strike, let's sit down and listen to viable solutions to our needs or is it wants? Yes. There is scarcity. In 2017, we can reduce scarcity. Increasing income opportunities is one way. Then the case of external conflicts. We can for example integrate new arrivals in our society.

Assimilate refugee children in local schools so that they too, can have education as solutions back home are found. And allow refugee youths to explore livelihood options. For example, provide credit in ways like; cash and food for work programmes. Village savings schemes that have thrived in many areas can also be replicated. Am not sure we will be cohesive in 2017 but I leave you with my opinion anyway.

The writer is a civil engineer

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