The state minister for higher education, Dr John Chrysostom Muyingo, has issued a warning to head teachers of seed schools against charging students fees, saying these have been covered by the Government under the Universal Secondary Education (USE)
The minister made these remarks during the commissioning of the sh1.9b Wamatovu Muslim Seed School in Mpigi district on Friday.
At first, Muyingo declined to commission the school over issues relating to absence of the five-acre land title on which the school sits. He later directed the Mpigi chief administrative officer, Moses Kanyarutookye, to speed up the process of acquiring the land title for the school to avoid future disturbances.
The controversy surrounding Wamatovu Seed School land title had stalled its commissioning, until the Ministry of Education and Sports entered into a memorandum of understanding with the landlord, Musa Matovu, to allow the school to operate on the land without any disturbances.
Since its inception, the school has enrolled a total of 808 day students.
Muyingo urged parents to fulfill their obigation of catering for the needs of their children at school, while the Government pays the school fees.
However, the head teacher, Abubaker Sseruyange Kasule, said the school is still grappling with the challenge of inadequate teaching staff.
Muyingo also urged communities that have received Government seed schools to exclusively run them as day or else risk losing them to outsider. He made these remarks while commissioning Luwuube Seed School in Luwero district last week
He added that students in many parts of the country cannot access schools in their localities because they have been taken over by boarding students from other parts of the country.
“I don’t want you to catch the disease which Mt St Mary’s College, Namagunga is suffering from. Local children in the area are being locked out,” Muyingo said.
Constructed on five acres donated by the Muslim community Luwuube seed secondary school is one of the 259 such institutions that the government has constructed countrywide.
Amin Deep, the director of Techno3, the firm that constructed the school, revealed that the construction works covered classrooms, laboratories, an administration block, staff houses and latrines.
The Luwero district education officer, Florence Bbosa, said children in the area had been walking 14km to study at the nearest secondary school.
Bbosa urged parents in the area to enroll their children in the new school so that the facilities can be used to the maximum.