Keynote address to RDCs and deputy RDCs

The Minister for the Presidency and Kampala Capital City Authority, Frank Tumwebaze, on March 25, launched a two-day regional conference for resident district commissioners and their deputies in Mbarara. The other regional venues are Kabarole, Mukono, Gulu and Mbale. The conferences are organised by the Office of the President. Below is his launch speech:

Ministers, Secretary Office of the President and staff, RDCs, D/RDCs, members of the Press, ladies and gentlemen.

This meeting is very important because is going to enable us set new work mile stones. I hope our office will institutionalise these meetings as mandatory periodic activities to always be part of our annual work plans.

 These regional conferences have been prompted by a dire need to interact with you, clarify on various matters related to your roles, gather your views and experiences and chat out the way forward towards better and result oriented performance.

I also wish to remind you of my circular of January 22, 2013, which I am re-circulating for ease of reference. When you go to the group discussions, please refer to both papers, as you come up with resolutions.

But before we delve into the current issues and demands of work of the office of RDC/D/RDC, Let us look at how the institution of RDCs evolved; such that we all appreciate the bigger ideological picture that informed its establishment:

Background

In 1985 when NRA had liberated much of Central and Western Uganda, the National Resistance Council (NRC) and National Resistance Army (NRA) High Command decided to form an interim administration based in Fort Portal.

The interim administration had the NRC as the supreme political organ, the Chief Administrator as Leader of Government and Commissioners as Departmental (ministries) heads or ministers at that.

The NRC had a secretariat headed by the National Political Commissar (NPC) and with an administrative secretary. The role of the Secretariat was to service the interim administration, create cadre-ship, plant seeds of democracy by establishing Resistance Committees/ councils and to mobilise the population to support the NRM struggle.

At district level, a Special District Administrator (SDA) was appointed for each of the districts within the liberated zones. The SDAs were directly under the Secretariat and, therefore, played the role of the Secretariat at district level.

They were supposed to be the agents of change of the NRM revolution at district level and, therefore, special in that respect. They indeed became real agents of change in various aspects of social-political and economic development.

They were expected not to conduct themselves, in all aspects, like the colonial and post-colonial administrators. They had an ideological mission to pursue as change agents. They were pro-people and worked with the people.

All those appointed were either NRA cadres or civilian cadres trained by the NRA during the bush war. After the capture of state power, some people within Government were not happy with the title SDA and were changed to District Administrators (DAs).

The same thinking within the Government continued that since there were the traditional civil servants to carry out the day to day administrative roles, the DAs should only represent the President and Central Government in the District but still carry out the critical oversight role in the district on behalf of the centre.

You can still see that the idea of RDCs being change agents was still not lost even when the job/post nomenclature was changed. When you are an overseer, monitor, inspector or supervisor, you are a result seeker and, therefore, a change agent.

You can’t achieve results without causing change of various processes including mindset. The title was subsequently changed to Central Government Representative (CGR) and the officers transferred from the NRM Secretariat to the Office of the President.

The secretariat, however, remained with a supervisory role over the CGRs and still had a hand in their appointment. There was an Inspectorate Directorate within the Secretariat that used to assess performance of all CGRs and mobilisers.

During the making of the 1995 Constitution, the school of thought that was all along opposed to the office of SDA, brought in a new idea that the CGRs should become “Senior Civil Servants” and be referred to as Resident District Commissioners (RDCs).

For whatever reason that informed this thinking during the CA, RDCs, though classified as civil servants, their appointments remained political so as to enable them carry out their constitutional duties at the district level with much political clout and understanding based on ideological clarity.

The reality, however, is that RDCs, though classified as senior civil servants, remained and are still political leaders with a major political mandate of carrying out oversight on behalf of the central government.

Though the classification of RDCs as civil servants by the Constitution did not change the roles as well as founding principles of the institution, it somehow created some bits of contradiction or ambiguity in interpretation. You would hear questions like how does a civil servant represent the President, chair security meetings, mobilise people or even oversee politically elected leaders at the district.

 So we all need to be properly guided on all these. Much as there was need by the Constitutional makers to clarify more on what they meant or wanted to cure by classifying RDCs as senior civil servants, a description that seemed to somehow be at variance with the stated roles, the roles themselves were made clear in Article 203 and in other enabling pieces of legislation, like the local government.

There is, therefore, no ambiguity in as far as understanding your roles are concerned. So let your work plans be guided by those stated roles, which I had also re-stated in previous circular with you.

Ideological clarity

The ideological clarity required of you is the understanding and comprehension of the core political beliefs of the government you represent. And these are; Nationalism and anti-sectarianism, Panafricanism, and social economic-transformation, which is an enabler of political independence.

These core beliefs or pillars are the ones that define the NRM ideology. The policies and programmes that we run as government and which we sold to the population in form of a manifesto are all informed and founded on the basis of the above ideological pillars. Just look at any one policy of government and audit its compliance to the above pillars, it should pass. If not, then it should be amended.

As an RDC or deputy RDC, you should be at the vanguard of understanding these tenets and using them as your guide. As you champion and monitor government programmes, always assess their results/outputs to see whether they contribute towards the realisation of those core ideological points.

You may need to ask your selves frequently, questions like; Are these projects being financed and implemented by government agencies economically transforming the citizenry? Are the people aware that for example bigger- rewarding markets for their farm produce lie beyond their district boundaries/ country borders and therefore sectarianism, be it tribal or religious won’t at all liberate them socially and economically?

This is the ideological clarity and understanding you ought to have as an RDC or D/RDC and which any way, any other leader or worker of government should have.

Do not therefore be intimidated or misled by those who want to misconstrue your mandate by claiming that engaging in ideological issues as an RDC or D/RDC(who is classified as a civil servant) is being and going Partisan and therefore breaking the rule now that we are in a multiparty dispensation. That is not true.

You are not serving a political party perse, but an elected government with an ideological stand. That ideological stand was articulated in its manifesto and was bought by the citizenry through a popular vote.

It is that manifesto that gets financed every year by Parliament and so it is the mother of all other policies and programmes of the government being implemented, which you are mandated to oversee.

By championing this manifesto and rallying the population to heed to the various policies of the Government, you are not being partisan but executing the duties you were hired to fulfill. Going Partisan means engaging in promotional activities of any political party or individual political leader. I advise you to get this distinction clearly.

What is expected of you?

The following general and specific activities form part of your work;

-   Being resident (and not visiting) in your district of work. It is an act of indiscipline and corruption, to draw a salary and other allowances and yet fail to report. This will be not tolerated.

-   Monitoring of central and district programmes. Reach out to the people and physically verify what is being done. Advocate for what is right in line with government policy.

-   Chairing security meetings and coordinating all the other security actors in the district. Sensitise the population on security matters and advocate for approaches like community policing in liaison with other relevant actors like Police.

-   Mobilising the population to play their roles as citizens such as production and income generation at house hold.

-   Attending to all other administrative work that come along with those general functions of the office.

-   Working together as a team. In fighting a sign of lack of ideological clarity.

-   Filling periodic reports to the central government.

When carrying out all these duties, always allow knowledge and logic to guide your decisions.

For example, how and when should you monitor government programmes and what should you look out for in that monitoring? The same questions can also apply to the other bit of your security roles.

Monitoring of both central and local government programmes.

In all your work always ask; how, what, when and why? These must be defined and well understood. The key word monitoring means; checking out to see that what is supposed to be done is being done or has been done according to the set standards.

The required standard can be quality and quantity of work specified, time of execution. Since you are resident, start monitoring right from the start up to the end of any programme.

As I had earlier on communicated to you in my recent circular, it is my intention that we work together (yourselves and my office) and strengthen your institution, enable it to do the effective work it used to do in the past and thus enable the government achieve its obligations to the citizenry.

You are the agents, the inspectors and the overseers of the Government. If you slumber, no targets will be achieved. I am ready to support you and attend to your work challenges.

Any RDC or deputy who acts firm and decisive in the conduct of his or lawful duty will be strongly supported and nobody should ever intimidate you.

The reverse, however, will be true, if you are on the wrong side. My other colleagues,  the ministers, will be exposing to you other areas like mobilisation and economic monitoring relevant to your work within this two day meeting.

I hope you will go back with new energy. Let it not be business as usual. Be willing to change and don’t settle for less achievement but rather for more and more.

Frank Tumwebaze, MP
Minister in charge of the Presidency and KCCA