Kampala Central Member of Parliament Muhammad Nsereko has blasted State House over spending millions of taxpayers’ money on ‘unready’ children of President Yoweri Museveni’s former allies who were wealthy and are pensionable.
This follows Wednesday’s revelations by Lucy Nakyobe the State House Comptroller that they were paying for the tuition for two of fallen UPDF General Aronda Nyakarima. She was appearing before Parliament’s Equal Opportunities to answer queries raised in the State House Scholarship Scheme. However, the names and classes of Aronda surviving children could not be independently verified.
MP Nsereko, the Committee Chairman wondered how needy Aronda’s kids are and why taxpayers should incur the expenses of paying for his orphans’ yet families of Army Generals are taken care of through pension.
Nakyobe fired back saying the children of fallen Generals like Aronda and Maj. General Julius Oketa should be taken care of given the circumstances surrounding their deaths.”They died sudden and their wives usually sink in shock and don’t know what to do because dome of you men die and your wives don’t know what to do because you hide most of the properties from them,” Nakyobe said.
General Aronda was fairly rich as he served in the Cabinet of Uganda as minister of internal affairs from 2013 until his death on 11 September 2015 on Emirates Airlines flight EK323 from South Korea to Dubai. Previously he was Chief of Defence Forces, the highest military rank in the Uganda People’s Defence Force, from 2003 to 2013.
Nakyobe also said the State House recruits needy children from areas like Karamoja, Aboke girls and Kisozi but MPs insist State House Scholarships are illegal as Section 42(9) of the Higher Education Students Financing Act 2014 requires that all scholarships paid by Government institutions be channeled to the Students Loan Scheme to which Nakyobe said State House or pays school fees from Museveni’s donations, not scholarships.
About 2973 students are to be paid for in this Financial Year, 2096 0f them in Universities and 707 students in secondary school all at a tune of sh20bn.
The scheme was started in 2013 to help poor students to acquire university education but were required to refund the total sum spent on them after 12 months upon on completing studies.
School fees for the chosen few?
Getting access to education in the first place can be a huge challenge to majority Ugandan families.
Paying school fees is beyond many families, especially where they have a lot of children. This means that many children are left sitting at home, waiting for their relatives to try to scrape together enough money to send them back to school. However, matters are made worse by the fact that at all schools there are many extra school requirements to pay for on top of fees. From brooms to school books and uniform and smart shoes, each child must turn up at the gates with everything asked of them, or else risk being sent back home.
Charles Mugerwa is the father of an 11-year-old boy in Kasenyi village, Kalangala district. On a school day, his son is at home. Asked why, Mugerwa said: “He has no uniform but State House can’t help us yet they have money to pay for rich children, like the ones of Aronda I heard on the news.”
