SUMMARY;
The budgetary provisions could barely cater for more than two schools, implying that it would take the department 56 years to provide two classrooms, a three-stance latrine and 50 desks to schools in the entire district.
Civil society organizations have warned that Buyende district might have to put all learning processes on halt, following the alarming shortage of latrines in schools.
One of the extreme examples is Nkondo Primary school, with 1,215 pupils, including 639 girls, sharing the only two functional pit-latrines found at the school, and the teachers’ latrine on the verge of caving in.
Ms Sarah Namugabo explained the chaos that’s seen during break and lunch hours, where students form thick queues at either latrines and there’s no specific order on which gender accesses the facility first.
Mr Dison Bwire, the district education officer (DEO), admitted that the case at Nkondo is one of the many education infrastructure inadequacies in the area, including shortage of desks, classrooms and low teacher-student ratio.
He explained that the budgetary provisions could barely cater for more than two schools, implying that it would take the department 56 years to provide two classrooms, a three-stance latrine and 50 desks to schools in the entire district.
“Whereas the department is aware, not much can be done partly because of the small school facilitation grant sent by the central government and meagre district budgetary allocation,” he added.
The DEO added that in Buyende District, the pupil-latrine ratio is 1:120 yet the national average is 1:40.
“For desks, while the national ratio is 1 desk to 3 pupils, Buyende can at best have 9 pupils to a desk, which is a very big gap,” Mr Bwire explained.
As disclosed by the DEO, the district has resolved to construct more latrines than classrooms and are going to revisit the two classroom block allocations at Nkondo Primary School, do renovations and save spare extra funds to facilitate the construction of a five-stance latrine as an emergency.
He then called upon the government to increase capitation grants to schools, allow their management bodies to prioritize allocation of such funds and have a special capitation grant package for quality education provision under the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme.
While presenting their petition for inclusion in the district budget framework paper for financial year 2022/2023 on Friday, the CSOs advocated for an increase in budgetary provision for essential public services in education and health sectors.
Mr Charles Mudumba, the executive director of Holistic Initiative to Community Development [HOLD-Uganda], noted that for the FY 2023/2024, Buyende allocated Shs4.5b to the health department yet the biggest portion of it caters for staff salaries, leaving unfunded gaps such as sexual reproductive health services and community health dialogues.
Mr Timothy Oboth, the Plan International Uganda project officer, observed that although they constructed a reception shelter at Buyende Central Police Station, little financial resources allocated to community development has rendered the facility almost idle.