The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
COMMENT: By Alex Turihohabwe
Even with high pay, facilitation, professionals who have lived in town fear village life
To date every parent would wish his/her child to perform well and join a very competitive school. The competitive schools today include Kings College Buddo, St Mary’s Namagunga, St Mary’s Kisubi, Gayaza High School, and Ntare school just to mention a few. This is natural; every human being would wish to be counted among the best.
But, with competition to these good and prominent schools, which parent has the capacity to take his/her child? These are parents who are well to do to the standard of Ugandans. They are rich. These well to do no longer stay in the rural poor villages and have all virtually shifted to urban set ups.
Their children, therefore, have been born and brought up in an urban set up. Their growth is surrounded by what goes on in urban environment. This includes having access to electricity, running tap water, access to information through watching TVs, reading newspapers etc.
The majority of the professional courses are to date filled with students from these prominent schools. These include professional courses like medicine, engineering, forestry, and agriculture etc.
To develop a nation, the government in leadership majorly focuses on several things, but we could mention a few like maintaining a healthy population, provision of clean water and good road network, offering support to farmers, and education facilities for the population.
Maintaining a healthy population is normally done through ensuring that people have primary healthcare to reduce incidences of falling sick and that those that fall sick have access to health facilities that are well equipped with both the staff and drugs and are close to the population.
The provision of a good road network helps in transportation of goods and services for the population to earn some income, while support to farmers might be in the form of provision of extension services include mundane items like tips of how the soil fertility can be maintained, what type of improved seeds to be planted; when and where to plant what and when. It can also include educating the population about the environment, about why certain trees and other aspects of the environment should not be destroyed indiscriminately.
For an impact to be felt, all the above services should be close to the populations. This is because for our population distribution as a country, the setup is such that the majority are scattered in rural poor villages.
The life in the rural community set up is such that there is lack of facilities that are commonplace in urban set ups; no electricity; flowing water; Tvs etc.
