By John V Sserwaniko
Kabarole district Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Dunstan Balaba, who also chairs the forum of all CAOs, has produced statistics showing that over 80% of the guys serving as District Engineers (D/Es) in Uganda aren’t qualified to hold their dockets. He says this is part of the reason why the roads/bridges infrastructure, which is their major mandate, remains characterized by shoddy work in many districts. He says the D/Es’ inadequate qualifications also explains why the President’s new (Force Account) policy of giving fully fledged road construction equipment per district hasn’t yet realized its objective. Balaba, famous for his outspokenness in the local government circles, says each time they are required to satisfy certain requirements by Eng Micheal Odongo’s Engineers Registration Board (ERB), the D/Es hire mercenaries (he called them Bachubas) to write for them career and technical reports. “A fully-fledged engineer is one that has been substantively appointed in a manner that complies with the job specifications required for one to be appointed the District Engineer. It’s clear you must be a registered engineer with ERB. It’s strange that more than 80% of you don’t qualify on that parameter. You are just masqueraders,” humorously Balaba who fellow CAOs consider the most senior and most experienced of their lot in the whole country. He was flanked by Godfrey Karuhiira Akiiki, a fellow senior cadre who serves as CAO Luwero district as they constituted a panel during the D/E’s retreat at Hotel Africana on Friday. Karuhiira concurred with most of the things Balaba was saying. CAOs are the ones who supervise all civil servants in the district including D/Es and Balaba said that of the 121 D/Es we have in Uganda, 94 are irregularly appointed for want of qualifications.
SHOCKING STATISTICS:
Characteristic of him, Balaba read out his statistics to illustrate his point. He said the entire Ankole sub region has 10 districts translating into 10 D/Es but of the 10 guys holding themselves out as D/Es, only 2 are qualified. In Bugisu only 1 out of the 6 districts has a qualified D/E and this is of newly created district of Namisindwa. Bukedi sub region has 7 districts but only one has a dully qualified D/E. He said in Acholi sub region’s 8 districts, only one has a qualified and substantively appointed D/E. Lango has 8 districts and only three of them have qualified D/Es. Buganda region has 16 districts translating into 16 D/Es but Dunstan Balaba’s research findings showed that only 4 are adequately qualified. Sebei sub region has 3 districts with three D/Es but none of them is qualified for the job. Teso has 8 district engineers of whom only one is qualified. West Nile sub region has 9 district engineers (9 districts) but none of them is qualified, according to Balaba. Busoga sub region has 10 district engineers and only 3 are properly qualified. Karamoja sub region has 7 district engineers of whom only 2 are qualified for the job. Toro sub region has 8 district engineers and only one (of Kabarole) is qualified. Kigezi sub region has 6 district engineers and only 1 is qualified. Balaba stressed this is a scandalous situation but acknowledged the new MLOG PS Ben Kumumanya’s determination to remedy the situation through initiatives like the Friday retreat to which all D/Es were invited to chat away forward. Kumumanya, who has been MLOG P/S for barely 2 years, has partnered with ministry of works, Odongo’s ERB and Engineer Dorothy Okello’s Uganda Institute of Professional Engineers to overcome the problem of D/Es being inadequately qualified. Kumumanya determinedly said he wasn’t bothered by Eng Odongo’s constant reminders that even qualification (basically registration with ERB) would come with its own challenges as MLOG will require a lot of money to adequately remunerate and avoid losing those same D/Es to private sector and other better paying entities. “Uganda will have benefited by having an expanded pool of well qualified engineers and that is what is critical,” Kumumanya said.
INTIMIDATING COUNCILORS;
Balaba advised D/Es to stop using strong engineering terminologies to intimidate councilors into silence each time questions are raised challenging their work in the districts. “Please calm down and stop intimidating those councilors because they will expose you as unqualified because without the ERB registration, which is a requirement of the law, you are irregularly in office. Stop reminding the councilors saying you were in the engineering class for 4 years because without proper service delivery, all that amounts to nothing,” Balaba counseled. He cited the practice of not wanting to delegate work in their departments and insisting to personally frequent the CAO’s office chasing vouchers as proof of how ill-qualified many of the D/Es are. Eng Odongo had earlier on decried this practice saying: “I’m your chairman and I will tell you this. You are never in office and instead of sitting down to read and bring yourself up to date, you are always in town meeting business people and potential contractors chasing deals.” Odongo said this is how the D/Es miss the opportunity to be actively involved in the road/bridge construction works in their districts yet that is where they are supposed to get hands- on experience to answer the ERB oral questions during the interviews to qualify for registration. Balaba, who spiced his presentation with many real life examples, spoke of a district where a retired villager stormed the CAO’s office insisting to speak to the D/E in the CAO’s presence “and the villager asked technical questions which the D/E couldn’t answer and couldn’t comprehend anything in his own field that this retired villager was raising.” Balaba said that, much as individual D/Es are personally to blame for lacking personal initiative to persist until they qualify for ERB registration, it’s a much bigger problem. “The pay is still very miserable making it hard for the CAO to push these people [D/Es] hard enough to go and register and become fully fledged engineers. They earn just Shs1.2m yet the driver of KCCA ED earns Shs7m and it’s really peanuts compared to what their fellow engineers get at UNRA or even in the private practice.” He said apart from the meager salary, there is nothing more the GoU gives these D/Es. He said they don’t have desktop computers or laptops; they use their personal ones. Neither are they facilitated with basic tools gumboots or even gloves. He said there are no staff houses in the districts adding that it’s a mistake the President recently regretted as a big mistake on the NRM government during a meeting with CAOs. He said there should ideally be a special allowance for D/Es working in hard to reach and hard to stay areas.
ROTTEN DSCs:
He also blamed the District Service Commissions for messing up HR issues in the districts for selfish motive. He said in some districts, the DSCs demoralize would-be good D/Es from working hard to attain ERB registration status (both Odongo and Dorothy Okello admitted its tough) because they sometimes frustrate the degree holders and appoint a diploma holder simply because he/she is the one born in that district. “This indigenization of recruitment must stop because many positions have remained vacant because the district natives aren’t qualified. In some districts the DSCs members deliberately refuse to recruit someone substantively even when money is there because they are waiting for their own son who is in 1st year at the University to qualify as an engineer and give the job to him,” Balaba said. “There is a district where the DSC advertised for DHO and instead recruited a veterinary doctor because he comes from there. Now just imagine the danger of having a vet doctor overseeing human medicine in the district; what will happen to service delivery in such a district?” He also blamed the problem on corruption giving the example of a district where the DSC members mobilized Shs13m to pay off a would-be well qualified applicant for the job of D/E to withdraw his application. The guys were sure that in this applicant’s absence, their favorite candidate, a son of the district with just diploma would emerge the most appropriate person for the post of D/E. “The man faced all sorts of threats and this coerced him to accept the money and withdraw his application because they told him we can even kill you if you stand in our way,” said Balaba who easily gets all these things confidentially reported to him because of his position. He said lack of adequate qualification also makes D/Es timid and unable to resist unethical fuel demands by the CAO, LC5 Chairman or even RDC. “You are hostage because if you refuse, the chairman will just tell the CAO why don’t we get rid of this one? He is unqualified after all. You end up giving away the GoU fuel every week and this hurts service delivery.” He added: “Some of you are the D/Es just in name because you surrendered your powers to the LC5 chairman and the RDC long time ago.” Balaba suggested that, since lack of mentor engineers is partly the reason many D/Es are failing to pass ERB registration interviews, the Works Ministry (represented by Eng Robert Lwanga at the Friday meeting) adopts the ULGA proposal to compel resident UNRA engineers to act as mentors for the unqualified/unregistered D/Es. Balaba said inadequate qualifications and bad attitude towards work was making D/Es so inefficient that they can’t do even basic things like generating an inventory of the tarmacked and murram roads in their districts. He said many district vehicles lost their logo books long time ago and an average D/E would struggle to trace the actual number of government vehicles in his district. As MLOG’s Eng Kasujja noted, the D/Es are supposed capture and keep info on all government buildings in the district but this isn’t the case. He also wondered how such unqualified engineers will oversee the regulation of gigantic structures private sector persons and other non-state actors are erecting in the different districts. Someone from the audience corroborated Eng Kasujja’s point by referring to Bridge Schools that ended up being constructed with unacceptably very low standards because of the floppy D/Es we have in the districts. “This is the clear proof that colleagues we aren’t doing our work. How do you approve the plan and someone ends up building something different? It simply means we aren’t doing our work but with this interface of today PS sir I promise we are going to bring smiles on your face,” said a remorseful D/E directing his submission to PS Kumumanya who earlier on had submitted showing the ways in which he feels let down by the D/Es.
D/Es’ DIRTY DEALS;
Balaba said greed and desire to make quick buck had pushed many D/Es to hijack the CAOs’ role to issue gate passes authorizing road equipment to move from one place to another especially when it’s moving outside the district. At the meeting, the D/Es unanimously saluted Kumumanya for organizing this direct meeting to deepen his understanding of their challenges saying it was the first of its kind in the history of the MLOG. The practice has been for the MLOG to interact with D/Es through the CAOs. They also unanimously commended Otuke CAO Joshua Mabiya whose district was named the best so far in utilizing the President’s new equipment issued under a program called Force Account (districts abandoning contracting and doing the roads themselves). Mabiya presented a paper sharing the Otuke experience on which many peers will be benchmarking.
ERB’s ODONGO SPEAKS OUT:
Speaking much earlier on, the much cheered Uganda Roads Fund Chairman Eng Micheal M Odongo (aka Engineer MM) had decried lack of self-esteem amongst District Engineers whom he said become psychologically broken after applying several times and failing to qualify for registration by the ERB which he chairs. Referring to Sheema D/E the big man Mbonimpa, Eng Odongo assured the assembled District Engineers that “regardless of how many years you have served and the major projects you have accomplished in your district, you will always remain a pupil engineer as long as you aren’t registered with ERB.” He urged them to stop blaming circumstances and seek mentors to counsel and guide them on how to properly write technical reports on which ERB bases to endorse them for registration. “Many of you have been failing and are now saying so and so in ERB hates me. That is why I will never qualify for registration as long as that man is on the panel. That is not true. The problem is with you because how can one man you say hates you on the panel be the reason for your failure to register when it’s a collective and not individual decision?” Eng Odongo said thanking Kumumanya for convening this meeting for the D/Es.
MLOG CONCERNS;
The MLOG technocrats were at hand to back up their PS in case the D/Es tried to get away with it. On his part, Genda Walala (a Director at MLOG) showed contempt for the districts’ claim that the road mileage wasn’t increasing even after getting the President’s road units because of inadequate funding. Speaking from the audience, Walala who had chaired preceding sessions raised what many perceived to be hard questions. He demanded that senior CAOs Balaba and Kuruhiira, who were on the afternoon panel, should explain why more roads aren’t being worked on now that districts have their own road equipment. “You still have the money for roads which you used to have for private contractors before this equipment came and on top of that you have the equipment why is it that you still blame the resource envelope? I expected that you should be able to do much more with this enhanced capacity and none of you is explaining that to my satisfaction,” Walala demanded as the two senior CAOs uneasily turned in their seats. “A lot of cost went into hiring the equipment which you now have. You aren’t showing us the impact this equipment has had on road network in your districts.” Balaba owned up and agreed with Walala and explained: “I will speak for my district Kabarole. We have done very well with this equipment because in 2 months we have done 114 KMs and this is work that would ordinarily be done in 3 quarters but we are saying that the money allocated to us can only do so much. We would like to do more if the money was there and that’s the context in which we are demanding increased funding so that on completing 3 quarters’ work in two months, you don’t stall. You carry on doing more work assuming more funds were availed.” Balaba explained that the decision to add what previously were CAIP roads onto the districts meant more responsibility requiring increased funding but a dissatisfied Walala (who knows so much having acted as PS before Kumumanya came) argued that the 34% increment in the URF funding as disclosed by Eng Odongo should take care of that. For comments, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755!
