Reform Agenda Wants Free Secondary Education for North Kids
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New Vision (Kampala)
February 18, 2003
Posted to the web February 18, 2003
Geresom Musamali
Kampala
THE Reform Agenda has called for immediate free secondary education for children from war-ravaged areas because their parents are unable to raise school fees.
"Their parents are in the internally displaced people's camps, unable to cultivate crops or do anything to earn a livelihood to pay fees," Reform Agenda deputy secretary Louis Otika said.
He was addressing the weekly press briefing at the Reform Agenda Bukoto offices yesterday.
Otika said while Reform Agenda's long-term interest was to have universal secondary education, the fate of the children in northern and north-eastern Uganda had to be addressed urgently.
"We consider that these children are condemned and denied the right to education. Wherever they have been admitted, they should be granted free education," he said.
Present were Kagulire Ssebowa (environment secretary), Wycliffe Bakandonda and Kamala Kannamwangi.
Otika said exiled political leaders including Col. Dr. Kizza Besigye, Dr. Apolo Milton Obote and Idi Amin should return immediately because they had something to offer.
He said the Government should not attach any conditions to their return.
"Uganda is for all Ugandans so anybody who has gone should be allowed back," he said.
Otika said contrary to recent reports in Sunday Vision, there was no split in the Reform Agenda.
"May be The New Vision wants to see a split. They first wrote that Reform Agenda was cutting a deal with the President that would leave Besigye in the cold. Now they say we have split along ethnic lines. That is wishful thinking," Otika said.
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