African challenge of accountability

LOCAL GOVERNMENT IRREGULARITIES

The revelation of a lucrative photocopying business in Pader district local government, in Northern Uganda, where a page of A4 papers were photocopied at a whooping cost of 108,000/= each by health officials, left many of spectators jaw dropped. The mockery of system was made even more apparent that staff paid themselves per diem for visiting a health centre which is half a mile away from the district headquarters.

These inhuman practices call for scorn and mockery indeed, since the government cannot punish the culprits. Pader is a remote rural district where children still die of preventable diseases before age of five, many are stunted, schools struggle for first grade, and; maternal mortality rate at pregnancy remains staggering.

This revelation, while damning, reminds us of the termites of Abim that ate the vouchers meant to account for Shs 900millions of district funds. Public servants in these districts have become that termite, not only in Abim.

I spent the beginning of 2014, in Pader district and I left that place with a half heart, given the potentials of that district. I was irked the most by the state of some of the roads and the urban planning or lack thereof. I kept wondering the utility of those roads during the rainy season. My concern was more about whether the district officials understood the intricate relationships between road infrastructures, social service delivery and economic growth. There was little evidence.

I was particularly irked by one road in Lapul which connects Pajule to Acholibur-Gulu road, inadvertently named “nodding road” by the locals’ enduring experience. The poor quality of that road should have claimed the practicing licence of the Engineer who sanctioned it! This road has some of the worst humps and culverts imaginable. At one or two spots, the culverts were built 2 meters away from where they should actually be. Still, I understand that the district bureaucrats praised this kind of shoddy and unprofessional work. These roads do not support emergency health needs (Emoc) for pregnant mothers or children at all. They simply show a discrepancy in the level of imagination of those officials.

Incidentally, the people in charge of these constructions are all indifferent and highly sensitive when pressed to account. I recall putting my concerns to the district engineer about the state of districts roads and the poorly constructed school structures. Apparently, my issues were received with utmost animosity as a form of “affront”, “accusation” and “because I come from Canada”. I understand that because I challenged the Engineer, someone was supposed to “silence me”.

This mafia like solidarity has been entrenched in these rural districts that seems to be at the blind-spot of he IGG. The attitude only help to alienate the disenfranchised locals from local government authority and services because civil servants feel intractably invincible.

It feels exonerating to hear the filth in these districts being unearthed by the Statehouse Health Monitoring Unit, albeit late and with no serious consequences.

In the maladies of Pader and Abim districts, resides the grim picture of filth, public theft, mediocrity, corruption, and a dense network of civil servants accustomed to plundering public resources with impunity. Public servants manning these rural districts are worse than scavengers; tight in their eating networks like the termite and indeed, they eat even the vouchers.

Mr. Kaziba’s revelation only represents the tip of the iceberg. Those “termites” that eat vouchers should be understood in that context.

There is need to strengthen the mechanism of accountability and the effectiveness of the structures that support accountability. Local government administration has alienated the locals from government by creating this overarching environment of deficits.

The people in the rural countryside are marginalized and alienated by a small elite civil servants who shape the narratives of deficits by abusing public trust. Desired services are always either deficient, lacking, delayed, absent, denied, or poorly resourced. People associate hospitals with poor services and lack of skilled staff/no medicine, so they choose to die at home from preventable ailments; schools are overcrowded, manned by poorly motivated teachers leading to decades of below average performances; roads are perennially impassable – either under water or infested with potholes. People in rural communities starve and die of malnutrition even when they live in arable land where foods is grown.

But surely, the termites of Abim and Pader keep eating the voucher papers and growing fat!!

END