RICNET staff Conduct Familiarization visits to her Information Centers in Kasese District

RIC-NET Staff on 10.08.11 conducted a familiarization visit to her Information Centers in Kasese District.

The purpose of the visit was to introduce the new RICNET staff ( Kyomuhendo Joselyn Program Manger and Alice Mbayahi Information Officer) to the Information Centers in the district. Four staff participated in this exercise; kyomuhendo Joselyne, Mbayahi Alice, Rwaheeru Geoffry and Baluku Yosia. The team visited Bwera information center (BIC) and Busongora information center (BRIC) at county level, and Bughoye, Kabatunda, Rwesande information centers at the sub county level.

At BIC, the visiting team met with the finance and administration officer Mr. Mapoze, Mr. Baluku Xaverio a field officer and Ms. Kyakimwa Agnes. BIC staff expressed gratitude to RICNET’s initiative to come down to the information centers explaining that it was going to bridge the gap between RICNET and her information centers. The visiting team also learnt that BIC operates in 11 sub counties and has 16 functional information centers. BIC’s main activity is providing information to communities, especially the farmers.

Sharing about the ongoing good governance/social accountability program, Mr. Mapoze noted that BIC had so far monitored a number of projects in the 10 sub counties where she operates except Mahango where she hadn’t gone yet due to inadequate resources. Projects in the sectors of health and education were monitored and a number of issues were generated; inadequate and delayed release of UPE funds to schools, declining education standards, lack of support from relevant stakeholders like parents and leaders in terms of supervision and enforcing by-laws to keep children in school. In health, BIC learnt that many Health Centers were faced with understaffing, frequent drug stock outs, withholding information by some health workers at HCs, inadequate supply of drugs and lack of staff quarters among others, while unreliable weather and outbreak of diseases were learnt as major challenges frustrating the farmers.

According to BIC staff, the community desires to have a platform on which to air their concerns, yet on the other hand a majority of the staff in public institutions interacted with were hesitant to share their challenges for fear of being branded anti-government.

BIC appealed to RICNET to consider facilitating public dialogues between the community and the service providers/leaders to address these service delivery challenges raised. Responding to this, the RICNET program manager appreciated BIC’s continued commitment to serving the community with information and to monitoring service delivery in the area. She revealed that RICNET was planning to organize public dialogues to address the same.

In a related development, while sharing with the chairperson of BRIC information center Mr. Isingoma Patrick , Isingoma informed the members that BRIC is a child of the former ODISEF information center. BRIC has got only 7 Information Centers at the sub county out of which only 4 are active. Lack of commitment and interest from the host organizations attributed to high expectations from RICNET that have in the long run not been met explains the non functionality of the other 3 centers. BRIC’s main objective and function is sourcing and dissemination of information to the community.

According to Mr. Patrick, BRIC’s information centers operate within the already existing structures within the communities like CBOs and FBOs. Patrick also noted that BRIC under the social accountability program monitored the NAADs program and established a number of service delivery challenges; delayed supply of in-puts to farmers for instance some farmers in Base camp who were supplied with 1 day old chicks were supplied with feeds one month after the date of delivering the chicks. Lack of routine monitoring or visits to farmers was also noted as a major challenge frustrating the NAADs project.

RICNET staff also learnt that BRIC is yet to host a workshop on community library management by end of August. Following this sharing at BRIC offices Patrick took the RIC-NET staff around some of her information points; Bughoye, Kabatunda, Rwesande information centers.

The RIC-NET visiting team was able to understand the different services offered by the Centers and the various stakeholders that they engage with from time to time.