The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) has called for the appointment of a senior minister in the Ministry of Education and Sports who is accessible and flexible to tackle the challenges the lockdown has imposed on the education sector.
Speaking during the weekly FDC press conference at the party headquarters in Najjanankumbi, the FDC party spokesperson Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, reasoned that the education sector needs a minister who is ready to be in the field identifying problems and suggesting solutions unlike the first lady, Minister of Education and Sports, Janet Museveni who is busy and inaccessible to handle the prevailing crisis.
He suggests that if a ministerial appointment is one of the marriage gifts President Museveni promised to the wife, the president should give his wife a less demanding ministry such as minister without portfolio.
The Ministry of Education spokesperson Dr. Dennis Mujimba declined to say much on the demands from the FDC and wondered whether they have ever complained as the ministry about the minister.
Ssemujju also called for the vaccination of all learners especially in the tertiary institutions at their respective institutions. He adds that the government must declare a public day or two for mass vaccination once the country gets enough vaccines, create and deploy mobile vaccination teams throughout the country, hire private clinics to participate in the vaccination campaign and register all the intended beneficiaries and direct them to vaccination centers.
Ssemujju wonders why the government plans for vaccines after they have arrived, saying the country will report more expiring vaccines if it doesn’t have a clear plan for mass vaccination.
It should be recalled that President Museveni insisted that if all schools are to be fully reopened, all teachers, support staff and eligible students have to be vaccinated.
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Professionally and administratively, I think the Ministry of Education is the most dysfunctional on the following grounds:
1. For fear of insubordination, how can a PhD professional educationist (Dr. C Muyingo) be superintended by a Quack Educationist (Hon Janet Kataha Museveni): someone who even before graduation (teaching pactice), never set foot in a classroom to teach, evaluate and/or examine any student?
2. In violation of Professional Ethics; how can a Minister/s of Education (Hon Muyingo) who owns a multi billion shillings investment in private schools, avoid the inevitable “apparent conflict of interest” (competing with his employer, the government) at providing social service (education) at the expense of Public/government Schools?
In other words, apart from the Covid-19 Curse, it does not require Rocket Science to expose why the quality of education in Uganda is the worse in Region.
Therefore Hon Ssemujju, it not enough to have full-time Minsters of Education. What Ugandans desperately need is a completely a new government. Otherwise nothing is about to change about the quality and standard of the education of our children. These people are only here to make money at the expense of the future of the whole country.