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Government has tabled a supplementary requirement of sh292 billion shillings for the financial year 2020/2021
✳ UCE exams March 1 to 31
✳ PLE March 30th & 31
✳ UACE April 12 – 30
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) is seeking an additional sh10.465 billion to be able to observe Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the prevention of spread of COVID-19 during examinations that start next month.
The request was made by Dan Odongo, Executive Secretary UNEB while appearing before Parliament’s Budget Committee to defend the supplementary budget request presented by Finance Minister in Charge of planning David Bahati.
In total , Government has tabled a supplementary requirement of sh292 billion shillings for the financial year 2020/2021.
According to UNEB, there are 1,181,940 candidates registered to undertake examinations this year including; Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) 749,807, Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) 333,766 and (Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education) UACE, 98,367.
Odongo said they require the extra money because of the change in spacing from 1.2meters to the required 2meters due to social distancing requirements.
He also says that they that would require more invigilators to cover the additional rooms to be used.
“The supervision and invigilation of the examinations is very crucial in order to ensure that the examinations are taken by all candidates in accordance with the rules and regulations on the conduct of examinations,” said Odong.
For Primary Leaving Examinations that will be conducted over 2 days. UNEB plans to hire additional 19,910 invigilators with each getting 48,500 shillings, bringing the total to 1.931 billion shillings. Initially they only planned to hire 39,183 invigilators.
In the Uganda Certificate of Examinations, UNEB had planned to hire 14,850 invigilators, but because of the social distancing they now plan to hire additional 8,703 and each would be paid 48,500 shillings bringing total to 5.909 billion shillings. For the UACE, UNEB will need an additional 4,747 invigilators to oversee average 10 days of examinations at a cost of 2.302 billion shillings compared to the initial 7,500 invigilators required.
UNEB also plans to have a total of 40 marking centers compared to the initial 30 as a measure to have fewer examiners in the marking centers. This centers will also have sanitizers , temperature guns, hand-washing facilities and extra personnel costs and this will all require 322.2 million shillings.
MPs not happy
Odongo said that the extra workforce is needed to decongest the marking centers to increase from the current 30 to 10 which would require procurement of extra materials.
However, Okoth Othieno the MP West Budama North asked UNEB to explain why schools are asking parents to contribute money for COVID-19 SOPs yet the board is also seeking money to facilitate pandemic examinations.
He also questioned the price of temperature guns saying, “I am not comfortable temperature gun of Shs500,000 average market goes for Shs200,000 Ministry of Education supplied temperature guns at Shs70,000.”
Charles Illukor (Kumi County) raised queries on the price of sanitizers, “Which sanitizer do you have unit cost of Shs1.2m. The new normal that has come, instead of increasing the number of people, we would put cameras in these classes and have one person monitoring, instead we are going back to increase number of people.”
In response, Odong distanced himself from the new charges asked by schools saying,
“We aren’t aware that schools are asking money for COVID-19 for invigilation. The issue of invigilation is a mandate of UNEB. So schools asking for more funds are asking illegally and not under mandate of UNEB.”
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