By Joseph Sooka
The Prime Minister of Busoga Kingdom, Dr. Joseph Muvawala Nsekele, has commended public servants in Central Government and Local Government who hail from Busoga for initiating a forum, “Busoga Public Officers Forum (BUPOFU),” which aims at transforming the Busoga community.
He made this commendation while addressing a meeting with these public officers at Civil Service College in Jinja City.
“When you’re developing an economy, you can either choose to develop it at macro level and have a trickle-down effect, or you choose to develop it at micro level. Now, while macro issues will give us stability, micro issues give us improved income. So, you public officers from Busoga, our model should be that each of you should get interested in the home you come from, in the village you come from, in the school you studied at, in your clan, in the churches you pray from, because you are exemplary people.You have two forms of power: Financial power and relationship power. What you say, people listen to. You should be able to listen to the words of the President that a leader in an area should be able to know what is going on around ,” Muvawala advised.
“I want to thank you on behalf of the Kyabazinga of Busoga, His Majesty William Wilberforce Kadumbura Gabula Nadiope IV, that if you come to work, Busoga will work.
“I also thank you on behalf of the President General Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, the President of the Republic of Uganda, that the Parish Development Model will work if all of you get involved.
“The goal of the President of transforming this country can only work when we, the people who are educated, go back and interpret the policies of the government, go back and help ourselves, use our resources to improve,” the Katikiro stated.
“You, the educated in Busoga, use your offices, resources, and networks to invest in Busoga to create jobs and we transform our area. Investors outside Busoga who come from countries not interested in Busoga will not develop Busoga,” Joseph rallied.
Dr. Aggrey David Kibenge, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Labour, Gender and Social Development, who is the Chairperson of Busoga Public Officers Forum, stated that they have gathered in Jinja as public officers who hail from Busoga with a desire to rally every public officer who is serving either government at the Central level or at Local Government level, so that we create a force that can catalyze faster socio-economic transformation for the Busoga sub-region.
“We’re concerned, of course, that when you look at all the indicators of development in the country, the indicators in the case of Busoga are not very good. Whether you look at it from the point of view of Human Capital Development, which may include how healthy our population is, how educated or skilled the Busoga population is, and the productivity of our people. Of recent, you must have heard a lot of concerns that Basoga have been attracted, a significant portion of them, mainly to sugarcane growing, among other things. And in terms of income, as one of the major income activities in the area, it is not translating into improved quality of life of the individual Basoga in this region. It is not translating into children within the region going to school. The pregnancy rate is amongst the highest within this country. So we feel concerned that some of us have been privileged because our parents invested in our education, privileged because we have also gotten employment in government, and maybe that employment and the benefits that come along could be at the disadvantage of some of the others who are not that lucky. So we feel we must give back, and we can only give back to our people by rallying all the privileged public officers within this region to come back and support everybody who is disadvantaged. We have leadership at all levels, faith-based groups, and Busoga Kingdom. Therefore, out of these, we can address the challenges that are facing our people. So that’s the conviction that brings us back,” Kibenge stated.
“We would like to see that various public officers who are serving this country, who are designing programmes that aim at galvanizing action that will ultimately lift this country out of the levels where it seems to have stuck, deploy that same expertise within our area.
“We recognize the fact that the government has come up with a number of programmes, and as I said, to which many of us, even people from this region, have contributed. For example, the flagship Parish Development Model, which is looking at improvement in economic participation and improvement in productivity at the household level. And as we roll out the PDM, we would like to position the public officers, all of whom definitely have a home, presumably within Busoga. And our challenge here has been that for us to achieve the results of government emphasis and investment in PDM, we, the public officers, must be exemplary. And our call to them has been: as we go home to our villages, as we deploy little resources in line with a call of government, are we also checking on our immediate neighbours in terms of uptake of these government programmes?
“There have been causes that these public officers have surprisingly contributed to. As I said, the public officers mobilized largely online and contributed UGX 120M to the Royal Wedding. And we later came up with another cause where we needed to support Jinja Regional Hospital with key equipment that for a long time they were unable to procure, where we contributed UGX 20M, and the money was used through Busoga Health Forum. So, such causes like these give us satisfaction and the conviction that where you are organized, it’s very easy to overcome challenges that we see in our communities.”
Dr. Safina Kisu Musene, who also hails from Busoga and is a Commissioner for Health Education and Training at the Ministry of Education and Sports, stated: “We, the public officers, believe this forum will help us to address the challenges in our region. When we move around Uganda as public officers, you will find some other regions doing very well because people that come from those areas go back and support those regions. So that’s why we said these issues that are always being raised — that poverty is high in Busoga, that teenage pregnancies are high in Busoga, that sometimes parents from Busoga don’t take good care of their children, that children fail to continue with education because they lack scholastic materials — so we said, let’s mobilize ourselves. How can we help a child of Primary One to complete the education cycle? How can we help a father, for those who work with agriculture, to ensure that they have model farms and have adequate food in their home? So those are some of the reasons why we initiated this forum.”
Rt. Rev. Professor Grace Lubaale, Bishop of Busoga Diocese, called upon these public officers to ensure that they are the pathway of development rather than a blockage to development in Busoga if we are to transform Busoga.
