First Published by Daily Monitor on December 10,2010
Today, we join the world in commemorating the Human Rights Day. Uganda commemorates this day at a time when seven men and one woman are traversing the country campaigning for the top most position in the land.
I, accordingly, would like to use this opportunity to call upon the presidential candidates and the voters to emphasise the importance of human rights in a broader perspective. I particularly call upon the distinguished citizens on the campaign trail to emphasise positive rights if they are to genuinely transform our country.
These positive rights include the right to education, the right to health, the right to food, the right to work and workers’ rights which include social security, freedom of association, fair wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value without distinction of any kind, a decent living for themselves and their families, safe and healthy working conditions, equal opportunity for everyone to be promoted in his/her employment to an appropriate level, subject to no considerations other than those of seniority and competence.
Nevertheless, I find we, Ugandans, very remote as far as the realisation of positive rights are concerned.
The country is sitting on a time bomb because of the high level of unemployment. Our universities and other tertiary institutions churn out graduates year in, year out, who rarely get jobs. This is compounded by the fact that we have very many people who use forged academic credentials to get jobs. While the President has promised Universal Advanced Level Education, I am yet to see what all the presidential candidates promise to do to tackle unemployment.
I have argued before that most of those who find themselves unemployed are those who are well educated. The illiterates and semi-illiterates are happily employed as boda boda cyclists, wheel-barrow pushers, shoe shiners, groundnut sellers and so forth. It is people with academic credentials who incessantly walk the streets for jobs to no avail.
What some of these people have chosen to do is to join the printing business on Nasser Road in Kampala and some eking out a living through forging secondary school certificates, diploma, and degree transcripts. This then means those who forge such documents use them to get jobs on technical know-who grounds, thus rendering the genuinely qualified eternally unemployed. I expect the next government to urge all employers to verify the credentials of their employees with the institutions they claim they studied from.
This would partly fight the problem of graduate unemployment.
I would also wish to know how all the presidential candidates wish to address the right to education and health. In regard to university education, I would like to know when the students’ loan scheme would begin and what would be the criterion of giving out student loans? Are they only going to be given to fresh students or to continuing students as well? Do our health centres have adequate drugs? Are our health personnel well remunerated?
The workers also need to be vigilant. Currently, we have no minimum wage and stories of workers’ rights being abused are rampant. How do the presidential candidates intend to address this? This is the time to make a social contract with our leaders and those who intend to be our leaders.
It is not enough to say there is freedom of association, assembly, speech, etc when the most fundamental freedom – freedom from want is not addressed.
Mr Nuwagaba is a human
rights defender
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