By Aggrey Baba
Kilak South County MP Gilbert Olanya has warned Local Government Minister Balaam Barugahara that his approach to monitoring schools and teachers risks bogging down Uganda’s education system.
Olanya made the warning during Tuesday’s plenary, questioning the manner in which Balaam has been carrying out inspections in schools as part of his wider local government accountability and anti-corruption drive.
“The tendency of embarrassing teachers, the way he’s doing right now, is going to bog down the education system in this country,” Olanya said in Parliament.
The FDC MP said Balaam should approach the education sector with greater caution, arguing that monitoring roads, buildings and other physical infrastructure is different from dealing with teachers and the wider education system.
“Balaam should concentrate on the monitoring of roads and buildings that can be physically seen. But education sector, he must handle it with a lot of caution,” Olanya said.
Balaam, who is Minister of Local Government and not Minister of Education, has in recent months intensified inspections of government facilities, including schools, under his anti-corruption and service-delivery campaign, using the inspections to uncover alleged irregularities ranging from unclear expenditure and poor infrastructure to discrepancies in pupil enrolment.
In Busia, for instance, Balaam’s inspection team reported a major discrepancy between the number of pupils physically found in schools and the figures submitted to authorities, prompting investigations and arrests.
His aggressive monitoring style has, however, attracted criticism from some professional groups and public officials who have questioned the manner in which suspects and public servants are confronted during inspections. At the same time, government officials have defended the campaign as necessary to strengthen accountability in local governments.
It is against this backdrop that Olanya took aim at the minister’s approach, drawing a line between exposing corruption and maintaining the dignity of teachers.
For the opposition MP, the government’s desire to uncover fraud and improve service delivery should not come at the cost of intimidating or embarrassing the very teachers expected to keep the education system running.
His warning puts Balaam’s school inspections under fresh parliamentary scrutiny, with the debate shifting from whether government should monitor schools to how such monitoring should be conducted. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
