Equal Opportunities Commission presents Report to Speaker

The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, has called for investigation into why Karamoja sub-region is the least beneficiary of the student’s loan scheme.

Kadaga was receiving the Annual Report on the State of Equal Opportunities in Uganda 2018/2019, where she was shocked that Karamoja only had 1 percent of the beneficiaries for the student’s loan scheme.

“We need to investigate how the people in Karamoja area get access to information about the students’ loans scheme. Do they not qualify or they do not apply? Don’t they know about it? I think we need to find out how the information reaches the beneficiaries,” Kadaga said as she received the Commission’s Report on Thursday 12 December 2019.

The Chairperson of the Equal Opportunities Commission, Sylvia Muwebwa Ntambi, said that over the past five years, male student beneficiaries are much higher than that of the female counterparts with 5,922 (73 percnet) male beneficiaries compared to 220 (27.3 percent) female beneficiaries.

“At the regional level, the Western region has the highest number of beneficiaries 37 percent followed by Eastern and Central region with percentage shares of 28 percent and 24 percent respectively. Northern region had the lowest number of student’s beneficiaries among all the four regions with a percentage share of 10 percent,” Ntambi said.

The Equal Opportunities Commission asked Parliament take control over Ministries, Departments and Agencies who have failed to implement recommendations made in their annual reports.

“The Commission made 35 recommendations aimed at redressing imbalances that were addressed to 10 sectors. Out of the total recommendations made, sectors have demonstrated commendable commitment towards 18 recommendations. No implementation has been done on the nine of the recommendations,” she said.

Speaker Kadaga asked the Commission to take action against the MDAs that have failed to act on its recommendations.