President Museveni shakes up RDC Fraternity brings on board energetic and patriotic team
Drake Nyamugabwa
According to sources familiar with the exercise, both full RCCs and RDCs and their deputies were affected.
Sources say the old man with a hut determined to push Uganda to a Middle income embarked on a thorough country wide consultation process on who should be retained, dropped, and appointed with the input of various stakeholders a process that involved security apparatus to carefully vet people with utmost integrity, commitment, determination and a spirit of workholism etc
The President was tired of sloppy and inept RDCs who were just sleeping on the job, others playing around with responsibilities, resources, and service delivery. We have reliably been informed that the vetting team had been guided on this and those who were found wanting paid the price.
The president was also keen on RDCs who were riddled with scandals. Some scandals involved fights between fellow RDCs, technocrats, ministers, RDCs taking bribes, sex scandals, ordering the torture of citizens, colluding with land grabbers among others. Other scandals were those where some RDCs failed to handle certain matters (policy in nature) putting the whole government in the spotlight for the wrong reasons.
These scandals undermined image and performance and at the same time portrayed a negative picture in the eyes of the public, donors, and potential investors.
Unearthing of the rot by Minister Ogwang who found almost everything in a mess—misuse of funds, fraud, corruption, and shoddy work among others—and RDCs in the areas he toured were blamed for not doing their supervisory work. It was also discovered that some RDCs were colluding with culprits to steal
The president was also keen on professionals, technocrats, and some good cadres as RDCs. Most of these are in the private sector and are always in touch with the common people while running their daily businesses. By contrast, appointing ambitious politicians, political failures as RDCs who are even unpopular in their areas wouldn’t yield much.
It should be recalled that last year, Museveni told the NRM Central Executive Committee (CEC) meeting that he had realized one of the reasons why RDCs underperform is because they concentrate on politics as opposed to development-related mobilization.
Museveni now wants the new RCCs, RDCs and thier Deputies to prioritize mobilizing people in the districts of their respective jurisdiction to embrace development programs that can get them out of poverty rather than scheming for political ascendancy. Museveni also said the time has come for the RDC office to be taken very seriously as opposed to turning it into a dumping ground into which Ministers lobby for their girlfriends, relatives, and former campaign agents to be deployed to merely access monthly salary.
