President Yoweri Museveni, also C-in-C of Uganda's armed forces, has this afternoon held a question and answer session with Officers of the UPDF, the Uganda Police Force and Uganda Prisons Services who have been undergoing a 2-month Political Education and Leadership course at the National Leadership Institute Kyankwanzi (NALI).
The delegation led by Col David Kyomukama, Commandant of NALI, passes out today.
The interface that took place at the President's country home in Rwakitura covered a wide range of subjects including regional integration, liberalisation of Uganda's economy, legislation, youth employment and poverty eradication.
Responding to a question by an officer regarding legislation, the President said, "Yes, legislation is made but young people continue to engage in those vices! For example, there is legislation against prostitution and it is banned. But you find young people engaged in prostitution! Therefore, what is important is to create conditions to enable transformation so that our people don't fall prey to hand-outs and exploitation, so that they are not lured by money”.
He explained that youth employment is a major area of concern that Government is handling by a multi-prong approach including attracting major investments toward industrialisation which factories employ our people, agriculture, training a skilled youth force, and capital for the youth to start own enterprises, correctly selected.
On integration, President Museveni stressed the need for people to have an ideological campus and said there were many reasons for integration and that regional integration is a fundamental tenet of the National Resistance Movement.
He pointed out the NRM has been very persistent on the issue of East African Federation adding that in Uganda patriotism is paramount while Pan-Africanism takes centre stage regionally, as our interests are based on prosperity, fraternity and rationalization.
"Apart from obvious reasons like bigger market for our products, East Africans are closely linked. You find the Acholi in South Sudan, the Bagisu in Uganda and others in Kenya, the Kalenjin and Uganda's Kup Sabiny etc. I can understand the dialects all the way from some parts of Congo to Mwanza in Tanzania," he explained.
On liberalisation, President Yoweri Museveni explained that government took the path to liberalize and privatise most of its institutions after discovering that people with vested personal interest worked better than those who are hired.
“Liberalization was a strategy to use the most efficient way to provide solutions. We decided to take advantage of people with vested personal interests to build the economy. They need less supervision and work better,” he pointed out.
The President reiterated the decision to deploy UPDF officers to spearhead the drive against poverty following their impressive performance distributing seedlings to former war zones, an experiment that is very successful.
He told the officers that an officer would be deployed in each of the 238 constituencies of Uganda to oversee distribution of seedlings and breeding stock and that the structure will be named soon.
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