Uganda Local Government

This Blog entry was written by Doris Kahuura an undergraduate student lawyer and daughter of our friend Victoria who is Director of Education in Kabarole (Fort Portal)

 Currently Uganda has 111 districts with a couple of districts that have been tabled as new ones.
The local government operates under the principle of decentralization. This means that the central government passes on some of its powers to the local government. Some of the powers passed on to the local government include catering for education in the various districts, health services, planning of the towns, sanitation and so on. This passing on of powers is meant to enhance good governance and the principles of democracy. However this well intended law is yet again overlooked and misused as many laws in Uganda have been.

The local government has the power to make local laws (byelaws) and to enforce their implementation. This includes the making of local policy and regulating the delivery of services. Such services include education, sanitation and security. However these laws must be consistent with the constitution and any other laws that have been passed by parliament. So a bye-law proposed by the district or any other level of the local government cannot be passed if it fails this test. This legislative power is orderly. It must be forwarded to the minister and later certified incase of  inconsistencies. The minister with advice of the Attorney General is to return the ordinance within 90 days with his comments. A similar process is undertaken at the lower local governments.

Andrew with the elected leader at Kagoma 2004

Local government also has the authority to formulate development plans based on locally determined priorities. The administrative unit councils serve as the political units to advise on the planning and implementation of services. For instance it oversees the construction of roads and all other developments made have to go through the local government for approval.
The local governments also assist in the resolution of disputes, monitoring and the delivery of services and assist in the maintenance of law and order and security.
Finally it has the power to receive, raise, manage and allocate revenue through the approval and execution of its own budgets. Under the Constitution and the Local Government Act the local government is to have a local government finance commission which is to consist of seven members appointed by the president. Their duty is to advise the president on all matters concerning the distribution of revenue between the government (central government) and the local governments, consider and recommend to the president the potential sources of revenue, advise the local governments on the appropriate tax levels to be levied and perform other functions as the parliament may prescribe.

Written by Kahuura Doris Rusoke

Save a small forest?

We had an idea which might both help to save a small forest and also perhaps be a fund raiser for our Uganda Schools.
Why do we send postcards to our friends when we are on holiday but when it comes to Christmas we send a much more fancy card in an envelope? What a waste of paper and of trees!
Could we design a new sort of Christmas card which was like a postcard but designed so that it could stand on a shelf.
Our great supporters the media company Taylor O'Brien once again came up with a great set of designs and we hope lots of supports will buy them.

They flyer is below and can be seen in larger format on our web site at www.helpingugandaschools.org

 Or please email if you would like to see a real sample.

What happened in Lira?

A child goes missing, abducted, in the United States. The police are notified and they issue what in America is referred to as an Amber Alert. Radio stations begin broadcasting descriptions, while TV stations flash pictures of both the abductor and abducted across the screen. Billboards along major roads flash pertinent information regarding the abduction. The police move out in force with helicopters and planes and the Army National Guard may even be engaged. Everything is put into operation to bring a child home to its family. At the same time, they go after the abductor to put him behind bars, so she or he cannot harm any other child.









In another part of the world, on the other side of this globe, in the northern districts of Uganda, 30,000 children have been abducted in the past 20 some years. Alost every family in the Acholi and now Langi area has been affected. Many families have lost a child through abduction, or their village was attacked and destroyed, families burned out and/or killed, and harvests destroyed by an army of abducted children. The countryside is virtually empty and people have moved into safe villages. At night the children of the north flee into towns to sleep, fearing that they might be abducted. They find safety in numbers in towns such as Gulu where even the local bishops and ministers have joined them as they seek safety.

Lira, located 215 miles north of Kampala, was one of those sleepy towns in Africa where you could simply be. It hardly made the international news, and one of the few articles. Its claim to fame is that the former President Milton Obote had his home here, which you can still see, or what is left of it.

Thousands of children have been robbed of childhood and, in many cases, of life itself. Boys and girls are turned into ruthless killers who no longer feel, but are numbed within, and their souls have become seared by the atrocities they have seen and in which they have forced to participate.





My friend Richard with a little orphaned baby at Lira in May 2010


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Lira Babies and the LRA

Lira, a town of about 90,000 in the north of Uganda has become known throughout the world for the dreadful atrocities brought upon its children and families by Korny and his Lords Resistance Army and I will write more about this later.
Being close to the Sudan border it also became a home for many thousands of refugees from Darfur.
But it is also the home of a quite remarkable initiative called the Lira Babies Home.
It is an orphanage with a difference and is run by a Sister Demmy. In her words she says "the babies come to us after mothers die in pregnancy, they are unwanted and left on the garbage heap, their parents have HIV/Aids/ and maybe the parents or the mother is insane".

Right now they have 38 babies of whom 10 are HIV positive and most of these will die.

A local rich benefactor was supporting them but he had to stop because his resources ran out.

The thing that is special about the Lira Babies Home is that when the children reach about 3 years of age most of them are either returned to a relative or are adopted and as a result they not only get a better start in life but have the support of loving carers when they are tiny and then as they grow up.

The total annual cost of running the home is about £12,000 per year but right now they are really struggling for any money at all. We have some ideas about this and some of you might be interested in getting involved. Do let me know.

The Nile

This posting is sent from the River Nile and I am overlooking one of it's branches in Cairo. We now know that one of the many tributaries which lead the Nile into the Mediterranean was probably where Moses escaped from the Pharoes when strong winds of around 65 miles per hour could have swept back the 6 foot deep waters for about 3 miles and allowed Moses to escape. The location is thought to be 65 miles north of Suez.

The Nile is over 6600 kilometres long and is the source of all the agriculture in most of Egypt. It powers the main hydro electric installation at Aswan providing much of Egypt's electricity. It does the same for Uganda at the hydro plant in Jinja which is still considered to be the source of the Nile. Recent thinking puts the source in Rwanda and actress Joanna Lumley went there for a BBC documentary. But surely any river entering Lake Victoria on it's southern banks could be called the source?

The Aswan Dams are really worth reading about and have successfully stopped the regular flooding of the Nile, created Lake Nasser which is now the largest source of fresh fish for Egypt but like many great projects it has brought some problems with silting up, water loss through evaporation and some new diseases to Egypt

Without the Nile we would not have had the Pyramids

Or the great Sphinx at Giza. How did she lose her nose? There are two theories. Wind and rain over a period of 6000 years is one. The other is the a religious zealot broke the nose because he was angry that local farmers were worshipping the Sphinx as a god and praying for rain. A bit like the Taliban blowing up Buddhist statues because they objected to their religion

Water water everywhere but....

After some of the rain we had in Englnd recently it got me thinking about water in Uganda. You would think that with the second largest freshwater lake in the world there would be no shortage. But live up country things can be very different.

Uganda used to have fairly predictable dry and wet seasons but like much of the world this really seems to be changing and not for the better.

Our St Zoe's schools used to rely on a large and rather forbidding pond for all the water needs of perhaps 300 on the site during term time.

We brought a hydrologist from Kampala to carry out sonar exploration to see if it would we worth sinking a bore hole.

The answer was disappointing.

So with the help of Bob Bishop's family and other donors we funded a water harvesting system with capacity of 250,000 litres. This was enough to cover all the needs for the dry season.

But not any longer. Last year we had to use our truck to travel 12 kilometres to Mubende and purchase water from stand pumps.

So this year we are just starting a major enhancement costing £14000 and this will collect water and filter and store it.

I am writing this in Cairo, 6000 kilometres from the source of the Nile in Jinja, Uganda. This extraordinary river brings life to much of Uganda and all of Egypt and the 22 million people who live in Cairo.

It is no surprise that nations go to war over water.

We will say some more about water in later messages

Doctors in Uganda

In England we have about 100,000 Doctors working in the NHS and with a population of 51 Million that works out at one doctor to every 510 people. In Uganda with a population of 32.3 million there are about 2600 doctors which is one doctor for every 12,500.

But it gets worse. Population is growing at 2.69% compound and when you add this population growth to the doctors who die or retire and then add on the 152 who will graduate this year the patients per doctor goes up to !2,800 a worsening of  2% every year.

Infant mortality is 65 per 1000 live births compared with our 4.85 which is bettered by many developed countries.

A new Medical School was opened at Gulu about 3 years ago and this makes 3 in the country but it is going to take a lot more to make a real difference.

Uganda has 32 Nursing Colleges but here the ratio of nurses per 1 Million  of population is only 60 whereas in England it is 7800 per million.

This represents a major problem worsened by the average nurse salary of less than £100 per month and a recent survey showing that 70% of Ugandan nurses are hoping or planning to leave the country to work in Europe or USA.

The NHS works hard to ensure that no recruitment is done in Uganda and many other Sub Saharan countries but sadly the same cannot be said for non NHS health organisations.

Lots of our HUGS supporters work in health and we decided about 2 years ago to sponsor a highly experienced practise nurse call Grace who has been working for some years dealing with maternity, HIV/Aids and Malaria among other things. She won a place in the University at Gulu and completed her first year training to become a doctor.

She is a very courageous Nun and loves playing football and netball with all the other students where she is the only Sister.

Erhard and Kilimanjaro

As a fund raiser to raise £10,000 to provide a vehicle for outreach at Good Shepherd, Erhard Paulat returned today from climbing Africa's highest mountain Kilimanjaro in Tanzania

This is a wonderful initiative and will be supported by lots of General Motors and Vauxhall dealers in the UK.
The vehicle will give our friends in Fort Portal the opportunity to visit the children and families with handicapped children and bring them teaching and support.
In Africa many children like these are totally neglected and thought of as worthless. Their lives can be helped enormously by quite small things.

 Well done Erhard.

Dance and Music

Children in Uganda really love to sing and dance and for we Europeans it is really quit a surprise to see how confident and uninhibited they can be.

One of the lasting memories you get when being welcomed at any Ugandan school is the entertainment. Wonderful singing by children with no fear or inhibition. This picture shows some of the children at Good Shepherd school for special needs children at Fort Portal.

The children who attend are not the most seriously disadvantaged or handicapped but all suffer from learning problems. In a normal Uganda primary school if any of these children were sent to school they would be in a class of sometimes 100 plus and no teacher could give then the special attention and help they need. Most would not be sent to school because parents who may have six other children often see it a real waste to money to send such children to school. If they do go then they are often bullied, a worldwide habit.

But now after Good Shepherd has been open for two years we can see some really incredible changes and parents have discovered new value in their children. 

See the fullsize version at: http://s855.photobucket.com/albums/ab117/pwmount/?action=view&current=bb01913d.png&evt=user_media_share

Sent from my iPad

Continuity for our schools

John Baptist and Charles, two of our KEDO Trustees

When we started the St Zoe school buildings back in 1998 we had no idea just how it would develop. A few acres of land and one building is now 80 plus acres and around 10 buildings with more to come.
Fifteen sponsored children at the start but the school and others we have been able to help have assisted well over 1000 children get a primary education and now starting both secondary and vocational training.
We decided that long term continuity is really important and for that reason all the assets and real estate in Uganda are being transferred to a newly registered Non Governmental Organisation (NGO)
The Trustees are being appointed andcare being chosen to bring strong professional cultural and local skills to the group.
In the early stages we recognize the need for top class skills in civil engineering and both Charles and John Baptist (in the photo) are top class professionals. Like all Trustees of charities they work for us unpaid.
The NGO is called Kagoma Educational Develoment Organisation. It now has it's own bank account and constitution.
Our Ugandan Trustees have proved invaluable in the design and tendering processes for our next 3 projects which I will cover in later blogs

Mud huts to Brick buildings

Whenever we see TV programmes about Africa we so often see the traditional mud and wattle construction of peoples homes. But now you can travel across from Kampala to Fort Portal which is about 5 hours and the only ones you see are used for storage. People build brick and cement houses which are much better. But the downside of course is that there is a huge demand for bricks and for brick making. If they are made locally then the technique is to use a simple clay mould to make the brick, then dry it in the sunshine and finally build a sort of large igloo and light a fire inside it. 

William is keen to develop his skills and we have a machine at the school which lets him learn and make bricks much more quickly than the old hand method where a man can make about 400 in a day

Cooking Biogas and the Forests

Sub Saharan Africa has a large population growth with ever increasing demand for fuel for cooking and heating. But people cannot just throw a switch and get electricity or turn a valve and get natural gas. They have to rely almost entirely upon wood and charcoal.

Charcoal is produced by driving off the water in wood by slow heating in the absence of air.

All over Uganda you will see people carrying huge sacks of charcoal and it is sold all along the main roads through the country.

This is resulting in a dangerous reduction in forest and the desert lands of the Sahara are moving south and taking over good farmland and dead forest regions.

One solution which has been used extensively in India and Pakistan is the use of methane gas for cooking. The methane, referred to as Biogas, is created naturally by the breakdown of vegetable and waste organic materials. The gas produced is about 75% methane and 20% carbon dioxide plus some other impurities. Untreated is cannot be used for fuelling motor cars but it can be used for cooking and for lighting.

Andrew Ssempiija Director of St Zoes has developed some real enthusiasm for this and with help from Makerere University he built the first school biogas plant on 2008.

It meant rebuilding all the school toilets so that this waste plus other animal waste can gravity fall into two underground concrete digester tanks.

The gas starts to be created very quickly and St Zoes is now able to provide enough for nearly all the cooking for over 500 people each day from biogas. There is no smell and and the other byproduct from the biogas plant is a very good fertiliser liquid.

                                

This illustration gives a good idea of how it works.

One of the special skills courses which have already started at St Zoe is to teach local farmers how to build their own domestic biogas plants and already we have done about 6 of these. The benefits to the ecology are clear. But the benefits to the people are in not having to buy charcoal or kerosene which are huge benefits.

Engage for Africa

Engage for Africa is Matt Houghton's fund which is raising money to provide sport facilities at St Zoe's and later at Good Shepherd.
Matt ran football coaching during his visit in 2009 and this was a great success with all the boys and girls.
Matt's company is called The HQ Coaching Centre and they provide a very wide range of sport coaching in schools throughout Merseyside and Cheshire.
He collected many hundred football shirts and brought them with him for the children.

Homes for the teachers

St Zoe's Schools are about 12 kms from the nearest large town and we have 34 teachers and other staff. Many have moved to be near the school for their work. So this means that we have had to find some ways to help them with housing. It is also part of the way of life for many people to have what they call a "garden" and we would call a smallholding where they can gow domestic crops.
Over the years we have built some houses, have allowed teachers to build on our 80 acres of school land or have acquired some property as we have expanded the school land over the years.
The future plans include more staff accommodation as we grow the secondary and vocational schools and our school farming.
Lasr year we funded the purchase of about 5 acres and this traditional Uganda house came with the purchase. Brick houses are replacing this sort of mud and wattle construction and we might use it as a store.

Good Shepherd and Learning Disability

Good Shepherd School is the only Special Needs School of its kind in Fort Portal and in the whole of Western Region.  It started in September 2008 with 35 Children.  In 2009 the enrolment increased to 50 Children and 9 Teachers, then this year 2010, 72 Children have been admitted to the school aged 4 to 17 years, all with a learning difficulty, two with a hearing impairment, at least three with additional physical problems, one with epilepsy, down syndrome and one with visual difficulties. One of our UK Paediatricians does a formal assessment of their problems and needs every year. At the moment a School has six classrooms that is from Nursery up to primary five, then we have also a Vocational class for the Children who are 16 years and above, who have severe intellectual impairment that cannot cope with academic work.  

These Children are vulnerable to many misfortunes like sexual and drug abuse, when they stay redundant in villages.  The aim of this Vocational class is to equip Children with practical skills so that they can feel they are worth human beings and useful Citizens with a future.   

Career Aspirations

Happy Kukunda is one of our secondary school girls who lives near the school. She is keen to learn some new skills and if she has the ability and the opportunity then maybe one day she can become a doctor.


This is what she has to say;

Skills and Jobs

All over the world the message is the same. Give me a skill or a trade and I can make a living. No skill and I have nothing to sell. I am abandoned!
We took a hard look at what are the really important skills which will give our boys and girls the confidence to make their way in the world.


For Uganda and for much of Africa the answer was very easy to find.


The population is rising fast. So people need houses  (building skills) they need food (modern high efficiency tropical agricultural skills and animal husbandry), they need clothes (garment making), they need heat and light (we have focused on Biogas) and they need health education.


These are the core skills which we aim to give our children and we know that they will make a really big impact.

The first Secondary school class room

We decided to start St. Zoes Secondary school during a visit in the summer of 2008. The groundbreaking was done during a visit in February 2009 and the building was completed in the Autumn.

This is our first building for the secondary school and it opened in September 2009.

We are planning to build two more more like this and also at least two special buildings for vocational skills teaching

Secondary Education at kagoma

Back in 2008 our Uganda Director, Andrew, carried out a survey of the children who has finished primary school in the 50 or so schools in the sub county.

He found that of the 700 or so who were qualified to go on to secondary schooling there was only one school in the area and it had 100 children in the first and subsequent classes. So there really was no opportunity for 600 plus children to get any form of secondary education.

We met with all the villagers and parents to discuss this and there was an overwhelming vote to make this the next big thing for St Zoe's. So in June 2008 we decided to support this.

Four days later we were informed that the villagers had already started to clear the site for s three class room building to start the secondary school.

The building work started in February 2009 and finished in August.

There are now 76 children attending and this year we start the next building.

THURSDAY, 29 JULY 2010

Malaria

Malaria kills many thousands of children in Africa every month and our children at Good Shepherd and at St Zoes have not escaped. In fact some have died.

So our supporters made a big effort this year and we managed to provide impregnated nets for all the 300 plus children who either attend our special needs school or who are staying as boarders at St Zoe's.

Sr. Theresa went out to many of the parents homes to teach them about mosquitos and how to minimise the risk as well as how to use the nets.