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Danger from Museveni’s new permanent secretaries

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Asuman Lukwago and Kabagambe-Kaliisa

Isabalija has been accusing the ministry of usurping UEGCL’S powers of overseeing the implementation of the projects. Isabalija and his team further alleged that the ministry was not supervising the contractor which led to shoddy works and inflated costs.

If Isabalija is to manage in the manner he has been advocating, it means he has to effectively cede management of the two projects to whoever succeeds him at UEGCL and hope that they will do the right thing and have a cordial relationship. If not, he might find himself either aspiring to manage the projects as PS which Kabagambe has tried to do or losing influence on two big projects in a ministry he heads.

In the ministry of Health, Atwine who headed the Medicine and Health Services Delivery Monitoring Unit has been accusing the health sector managers of “destroying the sector”.

Early this year, she told MPs on the Health Committee of Parliament that health facilities are rotting and that the main health facility in Uganda, the Mulago National Referral and Teaching Hospital in Kampala has been so run down that it not even fit to be a Health Centre IV, which is a small facility at county level.

She told them: “The referral system broke down long time ago. Mulago has been reduced to Health Centre IV treating malaria and we are lost into non-issues. I don’t expect Mulago to treat malaria, we need to go back to the basics and see where we went wrong.”

Diana told the MPs that the sector is in shambles and that there is a total breakdown of accountability for medicines in public hospitals, corruption through shoddy work, rampant absenteeism of healthcare providers, and a national health facility that has lost focus.

Bagiire, when he chaired the Parliament Committee in ICT often criticised ministry officials of failing to improve the sector to boost service delivery.

In fact, that is what tops Bagiire’s list. He told The Independent that he feels the country has not yet taken advantage of the homegrown innovations to aid service delivery.

“Technology exists,” he says, “the challenge is the quality of the service and we have the ingredients to make it better.

“I am coming with many ideas and views on policy issues and I hope to work with my Minister and the entire cabinet to implement them.”

Analysts say grooming top civil servants through the ranks means they get to the top when they are advanced in age and Museveni’s choices might have been determined by his desire to bring in young blood to have things moving. The average age of the new entrants is 43 compared to outgoing lot, some of whom were past retirement age of 60 years.

Regarding the contribution and impact the new PSs that can be realistically expected from the new team, some commentators say Museveni needs to change more than just permanent secretaries if he wants to get things moving.

Prof. Augustus Nuwagaba, the vocal developmental economist, says these changes alone cannot guarantee effective service delivery because service delivery is a function of many things.

He told The Independent that the problem with service delivery in Uganda has little to do with the people and is really a problem of what is implemented.

He said: “For example in a sector like agriculture, the ordinary farmer doesn’t care who the top technocrat in the ministry is. What matters to that farmer is any activity that is going to help him or her to have extension workers and information about pests and disease attacking their crops and their control.”

Niwagaba advises government to focus on the issue of implementation of planned activities.

Mary GorettiNakabugo, the country manager of Uwezo; an NGO advocating improved literacy and numeracy, says there is need for a fundamental change if sectors are to produce positive results.

In the education sector for example, the biggest problem has always been quality which is not going to be solved by just changing the permanent secretary, she says.

“I think the changes made in that (Education) ministry should focus on the issue of children’s learning,” she said. “We need to invest more in improving quality and until we tackle the teacher quality issue, there are still going to be problems in the sector.”

In the Education ministry, Museveni appointed Alex Kakooza who was the undersecretary in the Ministry of Works to replace Rose NassaliLukwago who had occupied the position since 2013.

A study by the Common Wealth Association for Public Administration and management titled `The Critical role of a permanent Secretary’ says Permanent Secretaries become senior public servants by rising through the ranks of civil service and understanding the operations and requirements of the service.

“The experience and management qualities of senior public servants are critical to supporting a department and administering a large workforce,” says the report.

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editor@independent.co.ug

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