Your mail: New curriculum still a challenge

In 2019, the ministry of Education and Sports came up with the new lower secondary school curriculum, targeting competency of the learner.

However, until now, the majority of the proprietors of private secondary schools have stood a stumbling block to this new development. Sadly, the ministry of Education left these directors out of the numerical numbers to implement this new curriculum.

They don’t see their participatory role in the curriculum and continuously maintain the old one that remains effective in Senior 4 to Senior 6 now!

Directors, therefore, believe that it is a waste of time to spend money on something they haven’t been given an opportunity to learn about.

Timothy Kitasse,
0775852575

Fighting indiscipline by motorists

Every road user in Uganda has witnessed motorists break traffic rules. Common violations that largely result into fatalities and injuries include over speeding, driving on pavements, reckless overtaking in sharp positions, overloading, violating traffic lights, etc.

There are instances where aggressive traffic law breakers fought traffic police publicly. Uganda traffic police, too, severely undermine their own efforts by demanding for bribes. A 2021 Ubos report on national integrity survey found the Uganda Police Force as the most corrupt government institution, with her traffic department ranking the second after general duties.

Contrary to actions of some officers, Section three of Article 211 of the amended 1995 Constitution of the Republic of Uganda demands, among other things, police officers to remain disciplined and professional. A bad precedent is set when those deployed or meant to enforce rules and regulations double as top violators.

In the event where leadership is not exemplary as ought to be, citizens meet the price of impunity. Although road crashes are a daily occurrence, the situation worsens during the festive season.

In the first 12 days of December 2022, the Uganda Police traffic report indicated 160 Ugandans were killed while 573 suffered injuries as a result of motor vehicle and motorcycle crashes. These were the highest fatalities over such a short period of time in recent times.

Whenever road crashes intensify, key sector stakeholders exchange accusations, blaming each other, thus leaving Ugandans without pragmatic solutions.

In a bid to save lives, several remedies have been proposed – ranging from the creation of National Roads Safety Agency, reduction of speed limit in busy areas to 30km/hour, increasing salaries of traffic officers, provision of latest equipment, widening roads, sensitisation, and instant fines.

However, without paying much attention to indiscipline and corruption in police force, and then checking impunity on the road, the status quo will not change.

Andrew Bakoraho,
Kampala.

Family life needs to change

December 2022 was particularly a bad month with all the avoidable deaths as a result of motor accidents. However, the most unfortunate death was that of at least 10 people on New Year’s eve at Freedom City mall along Entebbe road.

A country where the state apparatus is only trained and constituted to ensure political survival of a few fortunate members of society cannot protect the weak and poor.

Traffic officers will be careful and cautious on duty or else they may be arrested or transferred if, during the course of their duties, they annoy people connected to the ruling class. Why have our people become so low that a good life to them means sleeping in bars and drinking?

Many lives have been lost and wasted in these unregulated entertainment places and those in power seem to be preoccupied with regime survival. Our young people find solace in alcohol and other drugs unknowing to them that this is not a permanent solution to their problems.

We have parents unable to perform their parental duties as it was in the past. These are people who have grown up in broken families and weren’t trained to be parents in the first place.

We are in society where helpless children give birth to fellow helpless children. The fathers are absent. The more fortunate children are those left to be looked after by maids.

The underlining factor is that our society is broken down and we are not anywhere near the bottom. Therefore, there is no way we can reduce deaths due to avoidable road accidents, collapsing illegally constructed buildings, illegal alcoholic drinks, stampedes at concerts in our country.

Until we fix our society and the way we raise children, we are in for trouble.

Ismail Lukwago,
Kampala

What is a university?

Recently, I visited a government university. As a S.6 candidate preparing to join campus soon, I was excited. My would-be host had warned me to come dressed like a campuser!

I understood the assignment well. I borrowed sneakers from my brother, and clad in my pair of jeans and a fitting shirt strolled into the university gates. It was a buzz of activities with some students sunbathing, others in jazz, and quite a number in their lecture rooms.

I imagined myself as one of these in few months ahead. However, I first had to sit my UACE. Actually, I was on campus this particular day to meet one of the second-year university students who was conducting holiday coaching lessons for A-Level mathematics.

At the building where my holiday coach had directed me to find him, I stood waiting. The building housed a science laboratory, a few administrative offices and some lecture rooms. In the lecture room beside me, an Information Technology (IT) class was going on.

The image I saw that day has perturbed me to date. The lecture room was filled to capacity, and many students were standing. They did not have where to sit. They surrounded the female lecturer like a swarm. She had no breathing space on that sunny day. Her voice competed against the cacophony from the students.

I remembered how such a scene would have invited the wrath of the whole staffroom back at my secondary school. More so, I imagined the discomfort that students were going through amidst the heat. I was both dumbfounded and displeased.

The idea of a university that I had was being washed away. Perhaps my idea of the university was just fantastic. I had imagined a place with extraordinary buildings, enough space for learning, air conditioners and more specifically a place far better than our secondary schools.

I always thought of a university as a place more cultured than the rest of society. I returned back home disappointed. We were many students waiting for the holiday coach that day. We did not meet him. It is possible that the lecture room from which he hoped to coach us was occupied by one of the lectures.

One of his colleagues who had wanted to help find our holiday coach did not have airtime to call. The wait was in vain. I chose to tour around campus, and at each step, something more shocking emerged. The culture of trespassing is the worst I have seen anywhere to the extent that the university grassland is like a motocross training ground.

I also do not know if the computer lab that I saw was for the whole university or just one college. Even if it were for a college, that was a small computer lab!

I kept on asking myself; what is a university?

Jethro Kanyesigye,
kanyesigyejethro@gmail.com

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