Africa-Press – Uganda. Some MDAs performed poorly because they are new and do not have structures or the resources
Government through Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC) yesterday named best and worst ministries, agencies and departments in gender and equity assessment.
Speaking at the release of the 2021 assessment report in Kampala yesterday, Mr Robert Mugarura, the accounting officer of EOC, said EOC assessed 154 ministerial policy statement and a total of 146 complied with gender and equity requirements while 13 did not .
“The assessments were aimed at examining the extent to which the 2021/2022 proposed budget commits to address the different needs and interests of men, women, youth, orphans and other vulnerable children, ethnic minorities, among other persons are accommodated within the budget,” he said.
Mr Mugarura added that some MDAs performed poorly because they are new and do not have structures or the resources, they do not allow rapid integration and observance of gender and equality component within their budget.
“Others performed poorly because of lack of training and sensitisation about gender and equity compliance. It is what we are doing now vigorously except that resources are still inadequate but we are still under taking several trainings,” he said.
Mr Mugarura added that they have just finished a countrywide training of more than 60 districts and were embarking on the others.
“We want to see that from the 45 pass mark, we had at the beginning, we are able to have more than that, and we shall only be satisfied when every entity is performing over 90 per cent,” he said.
Pass mark
Mr Mugarura added that EOC increased the pass mark from 45 to 65 per cent because people were performing poorly at the beginning and were not aware of the requirements of gender and equity, “but now we have provided them with knowledge and our level of assessment is expected to go up when we have given you resources”.
“Every time we pass a budget, we issue certificate of compliance and we expect agencies to perform better and when we find out that you are no longer performing better we assess you as a culprit that’s why we keep on increasing our pass mark,” he said. Mr Mugarura also said the budget allocation for EOC is still very low were they are being financed with Shs13 billion from government but we realised that we do not work for only MDAs and local government but also the marginalised people have issues which needs to be addressed.
“To do such tasks, we need to go out of Kampala and reach the victims because having one office in the whole country it’s not fair and makes our work very hard, especially accessibility even from Kampala central,” he said .
Mr Mugarura added that if government increase their budget to Shs64b, they will be able to open up regional offices the way courts do because they also need follow ups.
Mr David Kibenge, the permanent Secretary of Ministry of Gender, said over the years, government has prioritised funding the Equal Opportunities Commission though not exhaustively as per their EOC first and second strategic plans that required an average of Shs12b per year.
