By Jaffari Muyinda
MAYUGE: Third Deputy Prime Minister and Mayuge District Woman Member of Parliament Lukia Nakadama has summoned district political and technical leaders over mounting public complaints of corruption, absenteeism and deteriorating service delivery.
The meeting brought together heads of department, sub-county chiefs and parish chiefs to address growing public concern over alleged negligence, mismanagement of public resources and poor implementation of government programmes.
Nakadama said the government has invested heavily in decentralising services and implementing programmes aimed at improving livelihoods, but accused some public servants of frustrating those efforts through corruption and dereliction of duty.
"The voices coming from the people have implicated many civil servants who are supposed to be serving them," Nakadama said.
She warned that the conduct of some officials was tarnishing the image of government despite increased public investment in service delivery.
Nakadama alleged that some accountants and accounting officers divert public funds meant for development projects by sharing them among themselves instead of implementing planned activities.
She said such practices cripple service delivery while creating the false impression that government has failed to deliver on its commitments.
"The same people employed to implement government programmes are the ones frustrating them," she said.
The Deputy Prime Minister also criticised corruption in recruitment, saying it had denied competent people employment while allowing unqualified individuals to secure government jobs through bribery.
According to Nakadama, some officers who allegedly pay bribes to obtain jobs later resort to soliciting money from colleagues or misusing public resources to recover what they spent.
She also condemned absenteeism among civil servants, claiming that some employees report to work only to leave shortly afterwards, before submitting reports for activities they never supervised.
Absenteeism and road funding
Mayuge Chief Administrative Officer Abdul Batambuze acknowledged that absenteeism had become a major challenge in the district.
He said the district plans to introduce biometric attendance machines at sub-county headquarters to improve accountability, similar to systems already being used in the health sector.
Batambuze also raised concerns over inadequate road maintenance funding, saying the district receives far less money than required to maintain its vast road network.
He noted that Mayuge has more than 1,200 kilometres of district roads, many of which were constructed decades ago and have gone for years without proper maintenance because of limited funding.
According to Batambuze, the available road funds are insufficient to rehabilitate the network, forcing the district to prioritise only a few roads each financial year.
Mayuge District Chairperson David Zijja appealed to the government to provide the district with road maintenance equipment to improve rehabilitation works.
He also urged members of the public who paid bribes to obtain government jobs to report those responsible so they can be prosecuted.
Meanwhile, the chairperson of the district roads committee, who is also the Member of Parliament for Bunya South County, said the district has prioritised rehabilitating roads that have gone for long periods without maintenance during the current financial year.
He added that district leaders will continue lobbying the central government for increased road maintenance funding, saying the poor state of roads remains one of the biggest challenges affecting transport, trade and access to social services in Mayuge.
