MPs Warn on the Impact Of Refugee Influx In West Nile

The chair­per­son of the Par­lia­men­tary Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Ac­counts Com­mit­tee Hon. Rea­gan Okumu has ex­pressed wor­ry­ing con­cerns over the in­flux of refugees on so­cial ser­vice de­liv­ery in host dis­tricts.

The Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment com­mit­tee is currently in Arua dis­trict where it is in­ter­act­ing with ac­count­ing officers of dis­tricts and mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties in the West Nile re­gion over queries raised in the au­di­tor gen­er­al’s re­port for the FY 2015/​16.

The analy­sis of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port on ed­u­ca­tion ser­vice de­liv­ery for ex­am­ple in Ad­ju­mani District re­vealed that en­roll­ments in four (4) pri­mary schools are in ex­cess of the stan­dard. The Dis­trict man­age­ment de­cried the in­flux of the refugees from South Su­dan and De­mo­c­ra­tic re­pub­lic of Congo on the un­bear­able school pop­u­la­tion.  The United Na­tions has said that Uganda is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the fastest grow­ing refugee cri­sis in the world, with over 1.2 mil­lion refugees and far-reach­ing eco­nomic and so­cial im­pact. It is now Africa’s lead­ing refugee-host­ing na­tions, with refugees from 13 coun­tries.

Hon Okumu and the com­mit­tee mem­bers warned that the rate at which the refugees are pour­ing in such colos­sal num­bers is putting con­sid­er­able strain on so­cial ser­vices that are meant to ben­e­fit the local peo­ple. In ad­di­tion, the bud­get for the host dis­tricts like Ad­ju­mani has not been in­creased to match the grow­ing de­mand on health ser­vices, ed­u­ca­tion and wa­ter. For in­stance, in some pri­mary schools the num­ber of pupils were as many as 240 in a sin­gle class­room. Of these it was ob­served that less than 100 pupils were Ugan­dans.

The Ad­ju­mani Dis­trict Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer told the com­mit­tee that the cap­i­ta­tion grant for the UPE schools also in­cludes pupils from refugee set­tle­ments.

In his scathing re­marks on Ugan­da’s refugee pol­icy, Hon Okumu told the dis­trict of­fi­cials that while Ugan­da’s gen­eros­ity to­wards refugees is com­mend­able, it should not be to the detri­ment of ser­vice deliv­ery for the in­dige­nous peo­ple. He added that there should be a limit to which the hos­pi­tal­ity and gen­eros­ity must ex­tend.

“I un­der­stand that we must open our board­ers to refugees, but there should be a limit to what we can do. If we are not care­ful these refugees will over­run some of these dis­tricts….It is very dan­ger­ous when the refugee pop­u­la­tion exceeds the in­dige­nous pop­u­la­tion.” Hon Rea­gan Okumu

Hon Okumu also added that the plan­ning and bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions for the dis­tricts do not fac­tor in the refugees and it is not fair for Ugan­dans to be ra­tioned so­cial ser­vices on ac­count of for­eign­ers.

He added that un­less funds are made avail­able to bud­get for the ex­cess num­bers, the dis­trict should restrict cru­cial so­cial ser­vices to the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Uganda has to­tal of ap­prox­i­mately 1,277,000 refugees, only 900,000 are reg­is­tered and since 2016, there has been 739,000 new ar­rivals from South Su­dan, at least 2000 daily.

The Ac­count­ing Of­fi­cer for Ad­ju­mani An­drew Mawe­jje re-echoed con­cerns of the refugee cri­sis and told the com­mit­tee that all refugee host dis­tricts have writ­ten a joint po­si­tion pa­per to be pre­sented at the Refugee Sol­i­dar­ity con­fer­ence in Kam­pala on 23^rd June 2017. Key among the con­cerns of the refugee host dis­tricts is in­creased fund­ing for host dis­tricts to man­age so­cial ser­vice de­liv­ery. The Con­fer­ence which will have the UN Sec­re­tary Gen­eral in at­ten­dance is mainly sup­posed to raise ur­gent at­ten­tion to the grow­ing refugee cri­sis in the coun­try.

@Parliament