Letters
How little Ugandan government values our education
Education Minister Jessica Alupo
Isn’t it a shame that we struggle to study so hard so as to attain a descent job but when that fails, the only entity that would have helped to create employment opportunities that fit our qualifications now wants to sell us to the highest bidder.
Media reports have indicated that our government entered a bilateral arrangement with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to export graduates to Middle East countries to do toilet work or work as maids with an objective of dealing with the rampant unemployment rate.
Now, this is a real blow to our educational system. It shows how useless our qualifications are.
That is, if our qualifications can’t even get us jobs in Uganda the little they can do is to take us out of the country and give us simple jobs of housekeepers, private drivers, and security guards.
Secondly, in this bilateral arrangement, the poor graduates will also be entitled to a health insurance and a minimum wage of $200 (710,000). What saddened me most was for Mr. Bigirimana, PS of the Gender ministry to proudly say in one media articles that this is a great opportunity for our unemployed youth which they ought to grab.
That with this minimum wage, our poor graduates will be able to repatriate their income back home for development. As if such a wage can be enough for a person here in Uganda to live a comfortable life.
Besides that, he did not even consider what it means to be an expatriate in a foreign country. What it means to live up to the standard and cost living of that foreign country. Nor did he bother to reveal the many Ugandan taxes that will be deducted on that small wage leaving nothing that can be called a salary.
I know our unemployment rate is high but I believe our government can do better than that. There are many countries that can value our graduates better than Saudi Arabia but if we go ahead to sell our graduates at such a cheap price, what should we expect of other countries.
They will look at that bilateral agreement and start thinking that we have a poor education system whose qualifications have no value at all.
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