Lack of government performance monitoring is shameful

Isn’t it a shame that the government of Uganda isn’t bothered or interested in monitoring whether the people of Uganda are receiving the services they are supposed to receive however little? Either the government is simply incompetent or it just doesn’t want to because it knows there is nothing to monitor.

We have central government ministers, we have political functionaries, and we have intelligence officers all over the country. Why don’t we know who is working and who isn’t?

One of the leaders in our region last week told one of our national television stations that the problems of Africa were not created by the lack of term limits but what the leaders do for their people during the time they are in leadership. Who can dispute that?

History has shown that in most cases, citizens clamour for change when their lives become un-livable. Of course others call or demand for change because democracy demands that there must be fair political competition for power.

It is when governments fail to work for the people, and there is no easy way of throwing out governments that fail to meet the expectations of the people, that agitation for change begins.

Recently, a Kenyan Research & Consulting company Infotrak, released the findings of a three-month survey they carried out to find out the best and worst performing parliamentarians and governors when it comes to service to the people they represent or govern.

And this week, the media has been taking the liberty to name and shame. The print and electronic media has been busy publicizing the best and the worst performance as voted by their people. While the best performers have been basking in media glitz, the poor performers have been fighting without much success, to stop the publicizing of the findings of the survey. Understandably!

Here at home, we have a massive government as we all know. Whenever Ugandans question and complain about the high cost of maintaining such a huge government when the government’s revenue generation capability is low, we are always told that the intention of government is to take services closer to the people.

Yet we know there are no services to talk about, reaching the majority of our people. What is mind-boggling and most frustrating about our government is for the leaders to brand whistle blowers ‘anti-government or opposition activists’. What, if we may ask, is anti-government about asking for clean water or medicine in dispensaries and other health centres?

Since the government doesn’t seem to bother where the money it allocates every financial year goes or what it does, can we challenge active unemployed youth to make it their business to monitor the performance of government with a view of showing the whole country what our so-called managers are doing for us now that we are nearing time for electioneering?

The willing youth will be surprised how financially rewarding this national duty will be. First of all there will be many organizations prepared to finance your survey because that money is always there. But secondly there will be those free-earners who will be falling over themselves to bribe you in order to give them high marks.

Either way, you will be the winner but most importantly, the whole country will benefit as long as you can eat the thieves’ money but still return the correct results. Somebody has to do this job if we have to save our country.

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