Africa-Press – Uganda. Local leaders of hard-to-reach districts within the Rwenzori sub-region have urged the government to develop a different template to be used during the assessment of the service delivery performance of local governments.
This follows a recent assessment report on the service delivery performance of local governments in 2022, which ranked almost all local governments in hard-to-reach areas as the worst-performing districts.
Among the worst performing districts according to the assessment report that was released by the Office of the Prime Minister Wednesday last week include; Kalaki, Kapelabyong, Ntoroko, Namisindwa and Amuria among others.
Ntoroko District Chairperson Mr William Kasoro, said: “What needs to be known by the whole country is that assessment on the service delivery performance done on local governments is becoming irrelevant. If you keep assessing every after five years and some districts keep where they were, why don’t you take steps to support them to improve in performance?”
“Education, as one of the assessment areas, has failed to improve because Ntoroko is a hard-to-reach district and at the same time hard to stay in. The District Education Officer (DEO) sleeps in Bundibugyo, and the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) sleeps in Fort Portal which is 50 kilometres away, how effective can those people be?” he asked.
Mr Kasolo was speaking during a midterm assessment on the implementation of the Zero Tolerance to Corruption Policy by the Directorate of Ethics and Integrity, at the district headquarters in Ntoroko on Friday.
He also wondered why the OPM puts hard-to-reach districts on the same assessment template as districts like Wakiso, Kamwenge, and Kyegeggwa among others, some of which have World Bank and Government funded programs for infrastructure development.
Last year, the then Chief Administrative Officer Ntoroko Mr Anslem Kyaligonza together with The District Human Resource Officer Ms Winnie Kemigisa, were arrested and later interdicted over allegations of illegal recruitment and extortion of money from job seekers among other cases.
Mr Moses Makumbi, the commissioner in charge of Ethics, Policy and Standards in the Directorate of Ethics and Integrity said: “This meeting was geared towards further streamlining and entrenching of the zero tolerance to corruption policy and the national anti-corruption strategy (NACS) so as to improve on the performance and the fight against corruption and engage the office bearers in the improvement of service delivery.”
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