Dear Mr. Avudria, I am so much delighted with your observation regarding the challenges the region faces (Education and Health Services). These are truly the gaps of service delivery that is hitting our region hard. However I also have one or two areas as food for thought or action points.
1. what is our main objective of being in this forum (As Members of the Forum). Do we have a follow up mechanism for every topic we debate in this forum? Does any concern raised in this forum reach the concerned authorities of this region and Country? If so, who are the representatives taking the lead in this. I might have join the association late but I feel our cries are not heard even by the MEDIA leave alone our politicians. Does the Country know that some where in West NIle there exists a strong 8 Districts, 5-6 different tribal groups' forum that is formed to address the views of the people?. For our own information, I have been following our different debates here, they are really topical issues, I feel if we can compile these, have one leader ........a member of stake present it as our memo. We have big and high profile Professionals in this forum. 2. Can the Administrator or the President of this forum help us and at least add one or many of the elite politicians to this forum. This I feel can also become a challenging factor for serious politician(s) to take action and start knocking doors for our own region to develop. This will also be a gate opener for our needs to be addressed. I don't come from Nebbi but I like politicians like Ja Chan Omach, Eng. Du Janga and others like Moses Ali etc. We have the whole IGG coming from our region but what role do they play? Is it because we do not challenge them? What can we do? ....MEMBERS CORRECT ME IF AM GOING TOO FAR. 3. Gone are the days of economic retardation: we need a Real Prosperity for All programs not the pen to paper one. Why can't we think of compiling and preparing a logical Memo, presenting this to HE the President.....and again the media will play a role here. Let him also know that down in West Nile, we have a pro Poor Forum that is basically agitating the government to look at addressing the gaps that exist in the region. Remember, the more you know, the more doors get open. To me Electricity and Roads are the two main services the people of West Nile need. If there is no road, foreign investors can not think of exploring the market opportunities around and the same applies to power. We have a huge deposits of Lime, gold etc in Metu Mountains in Moyo, oil across West Nile and many other investment opportunities but all these can not be explored because of two factors .i.e. roads and power. Many of these services might have not been extended just because of the pretext that we the people of WN are comfortable in our suffering status since we don't complain. With these I would therefore need to know if either of the above concerns have ever been thought of or done or yes. Otherwise Bravo to you my bro and to all of us for the brilliant ideas. Long Live West Nile, Long Live Uganda, For God and My Country. Best DRICHI Peter Carl --- On Thu, 14/10/10, JohnAJackson <[email protected]> wrote: From: JohnAJackson <[email protected]> Subject: [WestNileNet] Re: WestNileNet Digest, Vol 26, Issue 53 To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, 14 October, 2010, 15:22 Dear friends, I will not write thesis on the problems in West Nile region as most of us are aquanted with most of these challenges. I will only pick two issue for my commends a) Education. In the last ten years we have all watched academic standards in the entire region decline without taking any action to remediate the qaulity of education, which is a foundation for any sustainable development. Schools like Ombaci, Koboko, Mvara, Nyapea, etc which used to sign just like other schools around Kampala have been shading off their glory. Where is the source of the disease? When do we start to treat the patient, from symptoms or when he/she is almost reaching the grave or when he/she still can lift up his/her head? (i) Where do our election andidates stand on the issue of decline on eduacation in the region? What is their strategy to reverse the problem? (ii) UPE has boosted school enrollment to a point where teachers are stretched to the limit, which innevitably erodes qaulity of teaching, coathing, mentoring students to be successful. What will our elected representatives do to address the problem of over crowding in the classrooms? (iii) Many years ago, in the 70s/80s, there used to be Inspectors from the Ministry of Education who would visit schools and ensure that teachers are teaching to the professional stardands they are trained to have. Who has dropped the ball and what will our elected representatives do to ensure supervision of schools is enforced? (b) Health Delivery & Public Health (i) Although many health centers have been built throughout the region, most of these health centers have no drugs. Some including two in my constituency have not been opened for the last five (5) years. Yet the govenment spends billions of dollars for ordering drugs and distributes these drugs to the regions or districts. Why is there such drug shortage in the hospitals or health centers in West Nile region? Where do the drugs go if at all delivered? Who is responsible to ensure that drugs actually get to the health units? (ii) Do our elected representatives care to know if drugs actually reach their district/constituency health units? What will they do different if elected or re-elected? What can they do to ensure there is adequate staff or equipment in the hospitals or health units? (ii) There has been frequent outbreaks of communicable diseases like cholera, meningitis, etc in the region. These are diseases that are preventable by public health education campaign. What will it take our elected representatives to collaborate with health authorities to design programs on PREVENTIVE MEDICINE that addresses prevention rather than cure? So many diseases could be reducedor eliminated by educating the public. Lastly, is there any way to organize our candidates who are aspiring for votes to have open debates on the issues. These debates could be held in schools or other facility. I would like to encourage those candidates who share our views on this forum to focus on issues rather than personal attacks. JJavudria On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 1:26 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: Send WestNileNet mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://orion.kym.net/mailman/listinfo/westnilenet or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected] You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of WestNileNet digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: What are or should be the Priority Issues to be seriously addressed this Election Year (Ezama Ruffino) 2. Topics (Ezama Ruffino) 3. Re: Re: What should be the Election issues in West Nile (Gilbert Ringtho) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 20:54:00 -0400 From: Ezama Ruffino <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [WestNileNet] What are or should be the Priority Issues to be seriously addressed this Election Year To: A Virtual Network for friends of West Nile <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hi Vasco Thanks for these brilliant thoughts. Just a point of clarification: I did not mean we need to get our political candidates to express themselves but we would like the West Nilers only on this Forum to see whether political parties have clear policies about power, health etc and whether they can be broken down into doable components. Its us to air these views so that we know how to share them through the media to forearm our people when the politicians only come to ask them for votes without any clear policies on our real issues. Once again thanks. The secretary will add some of the emerging topics to our list of topics we have but have not yet received attention. God bless Fr Ruffino EZAMA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://orion.kym.net/pipermail/westnilenet/attachments/20101013/62006cf5/attachment-0001.html ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 21:01:45 -0400 From: Ezama Ruffino <[email protected]> Subject: [WestNileNet] Topics To: A Virtual Network for friends of West Nile <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" My brothers and sisters For those who caught the train of discussions later, this Forum had so far expressed some views on various topics such as Deforestation Electricity Supply Education Public University Roads Water Supply Poverty, Hunger & starvation Public Health and health education Economic Development Youth and Substance abuse Unemployment & Job Creation Promoting West Nile Cultures Elections & Voter education This time our secretary is taking note and summarizes it so that we see which doable actions to be taken, by whom and when. In case you find a theme worth discussing let the moderators know so that the secretary takes note of it and we allocate time for its discussions. Thanks Ruffino -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://orion.kym.net/pipermail/westnilenet/attachments/20101013/8bae2519/attachment-0001.html ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 07:26:30 +0100 (BST) From: Gilbert Ringtho <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [WestNileNet] Re: What should be the Election issues in West Nile To: A Virtual Network for friends of West Nile <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hi friends, Definitive topics-covering areas of our needs are important.Lets itemise them and see which policians have programmes that suit us; Road, educ, health, agric potential, agro-industries, skills gap, social/cultural hegemony, position Arua as a city, rural transport, eelectricity, clean water & sanitation, Arua airport, improvement of farm institutes, environmental protection.etc. The agenda/programmes must answer Westnile's specific needs and not blanket needs & with specific timelines. It is only then that we can have politicians answerable to us and the other way round. Friends, Lets build on this to define ourselves better.Its no more about rhetoric. rgds Gilbert ________________________________ From: Vasco Oguzua <[email protected]> To: A Virtual Network for friends of West Nile <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, 13 October, 2010 22:40:53 Subject: [WestNileNet] Re: What should be the Election issues in West Nile Fellow WestNilers, Fr. Ruffino suggested that we should have a discussion on what the issues of priority will be for our region in the coming elections. I know almost everything is our region is a problem, including food which used to be in abundance during those days when each homestead had at least two or three granaries to store produce from the gardens. Immediately after the war and and coming back from exile, our homesteads have no granaries and we have seen the suffering of people who now have to buy food from the market. Although part of the problem of scarcity of food in our region is selling of produce by the local farmers in Southern Sudan, we need to have a serious agenda to advocate for food security in West Nile. 1. Food Security becomes in my view an important issue to be address in our region. The loss of soil and soil fertility due to erosion, the depletion of vegetation associated with the labour intensive tobacco production, coupled with population pressure has diminished and exhausted available arable land, resulting in reduced food production. We need to advocate for elimination of tobacco growth in our region and find other ways to improve food production which can have some economic benefit in place of tobacco. Hopefully the recent issues taken against tobacco companies can highly feature in the campaigns to bring the tobacco companies to book. Food security in some has a close association with poverty and unhealthy population. I hope we can all agree that a hungry population is an unproductive population. 2. Energy - (Electricity supply) to me is another serious development factor or contributor which has eluded our region for a long time. Our region has been played as ping pong game by the government for a long time - WENRECO has failed the region with Intermittent power, Nyagak has not been completed and it looks like it will not be completed in the near future. I heard from the newspapers that there is a discussion with Malaysian company to build yet a new a thermal power plant in West Nile (I am not sure if anything has been mentioned about completing Nyagak). With an already degraded environment in our region, and the dangerous environmental consequences of Thermal power, I wonder if the issue of thermal power is a good idea for our region. Whatever happened to the completion of Nyagak? I would tend to think that the challenges we have experienced in the energy sector should be used as an opportunity to plan to a long term Green Energy concepts. Green Energy would at least help in alleviating some of the environmental consequences we have experienced in our area. I think this issue needs to be addressed with specific time frame, lest we are doomed in our development agenda. I think that a reliable and sufficient energy/power resources is vital and a one of the key drivers of development. 3. Water and sanitation - this is another area of priority which I think we should very seriously consider because most of the water supply in the region is from Boreholes. Our fast growing population equally has significantly increased water demand for both domestic and agricultural use. We are bound experience serious water shortage in the near future as the vagaries of climate change and environmental degradation will dictate on on limited water resources. While we can still get water from boreholes we need to think of conservation ideas of how we can pump and store water from the boreholes into storage tanks so that the supply of water can be properly controlled based on the how much a location uses. Storage water will also offer the opportunity of at least ensuring the treatment of the water before storage so that there is supply of clean water. This will in the end have some health benefits when people consume relatively clean water. We should be aware by now that getting water from the Nile may have a lot of Problems because of the the restrictions from countries like Sudan and Egypt (Nile Basin Agreement) or will require a lot of negotiations which we may have to begin to plan for now if we think of the Nile as a source water supply for our region. The poor sanitation in most of our urban areas is one of the issues that need to be addressed, since the danger of increased population in urban areas without clean water and sanitation always results in the various epidemics we have experienced. 4. Investments in our region is something I think we need to seriously pay attention to. How and what investments can we establish or attract in our area. I am of the view that the flow of our people in to the south is as a result of lack of employment opportunities in our region. There is limited government and NGO employment opportunities, which means we have to think of creating our own employment opportunities for our region. One of the ways I think is to diversify our agricultural economy. This will require good business attracting infrastructure (electricity, clean water and sanitation, good roads, healthy and educated population and capital. Agriculture being the main occupation in our area may need to be reviewed from what are the most suitable crops people can grow with minimum or less intensive labour and gain some reasonable economic benefits, unlike the labour intensive tobacco from which our people are getting poorer and farmers also being cheated by the tobacco companies. I think individually we may not be able to have the capitla for serious investiment, but we as the members on this forum should take the initiative to challenge ourselves to create a capital fund to start some form of investiment. In my humble opinion, if we on this forum contributed at least UG Sh.100,000.00/= each, (I do not know how many members are on the forum), we should at least be able to come up with some capital for some investment. Such a fund if properly invested should provide us with profits and some strength to borrow from banks to begin implementing some of these issues we are waiting for the government to do for us. How long shall we wait for the government to rescue us when our rural people are truly in desperate need. 5. Education and Technology, health, roads and bridges, environment are all other areas of importance which all need to be addressed. While the Fr. Ruffino had suggested that the electorate ask the various political party leaders or representatives about their policy positions, I think our agenda for our regions development must be the forefront regardless of the policy positions of the parties. We must educate the people to demand for the the issues that will reduce the burden on their day to day life from the representatives of the parties who are aspiring to stand in our region how they intend to address these development issues in West Nile. Note: The suggestion I have made about the contribution is to raise a capital fund which we can use to start an investment and we could also use the capital as a security to negotiate a loan from some of the banks in order to start some of these projects without government help so that we are able to take full control of what exactly we want and how we want to implement what we intend to do. For example, if we had capital we should be able to negotiate some partnership with private energy company to construct 10 Megawatts Solar or Wind power station (I am not sure if this would be sufficient for the whole of West Nile this was just my wild guess, I know we have engineers who would be able to advise on such ) which we can run jointly for an agreed period of time rather than have the government always playing ping pong games with us. Over to you fellows Vasco Oguzua -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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