How long should visitors stay?

Visitors come in different forms and for various reasons or call them excuses. Some will come to catch up with a long-lost friend yet others are just but looking for a place to sleep.

But for whatever reasons you intend to visit, you need to ask yourself; how long do I have to stay before leaving?
It is natural that a visitor, even without notifying his hosts, will be welcomed and given the reception that they deserve, however, things will begin to change after days of staying around.

Back then, some visitors, especially those from upcountry, would carry food for their hosts; however, the trend seems to have changed.

This was a good gesture that would pass as an indirect way of contributing to the home and being mindful of not increasing one’s food budget.
Much of this has changed and people are beginning to view visitors, especially those who overstay their welcome, as a bother.

Some visitors are an inconvenience
*Grace Nakitende is a mother of four who swears she has previously had to facilitate visitors who overstay to leave.

“I have had to ask two relatives [one an aunt and a distant cousin] who would visit for days without showing any sign of leaving. I told them you cannot come into a married woman’s home and stay for days. They have never come again,” she said.

Inconveniencing
Many families in urban areas have no visitors’ rooms, therefore, it is inconveniencing if you have to squeeze a visitor in the children’s or sitting room for days without end. Some will for days sleep on the couch without minding on when they should be leaving.
*Sylvia Namono, a mother of three, has had to house her sister for months now after she left her husband’s home three months ago.

“I had not expected her to bring her child but she came with her. I let it pass because I had thought she would be leaving after a month. It is now three months and she shows no sign of leaving. My daughter has been sleeping on the floor because she is using her bed,” Namono says.
Asked why she has not engaged her, she says she has tried dropping hints but they have not worked and she fears being aggressive because it would jeopardise their relationship. and talking to her directly would make her the talk in their family having chased her helpless sister.

However, if she is going to stay around for the next five months, Namono says: “I will be forced to forget all that and stand my ground as the lady of the house.”
Namono’s husband, she told us, will be away till January, which explains why she has allowed her to stay for this long.

Nsubuga Kasiimu, a Kamwokya resident, believes a visitor at maximum should not stay for more than a week.

“Things have become difficult so you would not want to overshoot your budget because you are feeding a visitor who has refused to leave,” he says, adding that even those who stay for a week should be able to contribute to food and if possible other bills.

However, Diana Kalembe, a mother believes there are those visitors who you would want to stay a little longer and those who should not.

“After giving birth to my second child, I requested my sister in her Senior Six vacation to come and give me a hand. But to my shock, I ended up even cooking the food we ate as she watched TV. After two weeks, I could not handle the extra stress. I gave her transport to return home,” she says visibly disgusted.

Privacy vs visitors
Visiting a married person could come with its inconvenience but even those without partners or living alone can be inconvenienced.

Visitors might be tempted to take advantage of the presence of more space in the house to stay long forgetting that their hosts also enjoy space and would want moments alone.

Government should take education seriously

As expected, public universities opened two days ago but, in effect, remain not open after the government failed to honour a commitment to increase the pay of non-teaching staff. Many people will be wondering how and why the government cannot find Shs28 billion to pay off the workers who have held firmly onto their determination to remain on strike until their dues are met.

One hope is that the government will not be tempted to resort to intimidation as a way of resolving this long-standing problem. Such tactics have been seen in the health sector where army doctors are routinely pressed into service at public health centres when civilian staff lay down their tools. Experience, however, has shown that you cannot sustain this sort of thing because you will have only dug a hole to plug another hole.

A longer term solution, preferably one involving keeping the commitment to pay the enhanced pay, must be sought.

If we are to believe the news reports, the problem is not about lack of cash per se. What seems to have happened is that money meant for the salary enhancement appears to have been diverted. And now the government is biting its tongue as officials try to come up with a plausible explanation.

The non-teaching staff will feel slighted. They are unlikely to resume work in the near future given the casual manner with which their concerns have been handled so far. The promise by the Education and Finance ministries to come good on the arrears in the second quarter of the financial year is problematic in itself as it suggests that there is no money in government coffers, which is hard to believe.

Only a few weeks ago, the same government appeared ready to shell out Shs3 trillion to private companies facing financial distress. The university staff must have taken note and will probably find it hard to understand that the same government now cannot find a fraction of that sum to pay their arrears.

This whole affair reeks of a lack of goodwill. The government does not come across as an honest negotiator. In the meantime, we are again doing a great disservice to the students whose semester will now be pegged back.

How can we expect perfect scores at our public universities if the tranquility necessary for proper application is always disrupted by the noise and chaos stirred by industrial action? The quality of public education in this country has already fallen to very low levels. The primary cause of this malaise is the government which gives the impression of being either unwilling or unable to properly address itself to the issue.
Uganda deserves much better.

The issue: Strikes.
Our view: The primary cause of this malaise is the government which gives the impression of being either unwilling or unable to properly address itself to the issue. Uganda deserves much better.

29-year-old Ugandan maid flees from Oman

Sumaiya Nannyanzi, 29, is a maid based in Oman and in an extensive interview carried in the Daily Monitor last week; she revealed how she was being tortured by her employers to the extent of being denied food.

However, given the condition under which she has been living, Nannyanzi fled her employer’s home in Weleiyh-Boucher, Muscat and sought refuge at the Kenyan embassy in the capital.

In a phone interview last weekend, Nannyanzi told Daily Monitor she had sneaked out of her employer’s home last Saturday after months without payment.

She narrated how the conditions at her place of employment, which included physical torture, were no longer favourable for her to stay.

“The following day [after Daily Monitor had carried her story] a neighbour warned me and advised me to flee for my life. She [claimed] three maids from Africa had recently died in Muscat under mysterious circumstances,” she told Daily Monitor.

She said she was driven by the same neighbour to the Kenyan embassy in Muscat where she was still stranded by last Saturday.

Daily Monitor could not independently verify the claims as calls to various embassy lines went unanswered. Uganda has no embassy in Oman, which could explain why Nannyanzi chose to seek refuge in the Kenyan Embassy.

A number of Ugandans, according to Nannyanzi are stuck in Oman with no means of returning home.

On August 8, 2016 Daily Monitor carried a story in which Nannyanzi claimed she was being mistreated by her employers and requested the Ugandan government to help her return home.

However, it was still unclear if the government would intervene in the matter since some officials in government have time-and-again said they are reluctant to deal with individual cases, especially those who have been smuggled into Middle East countries.

Recently, there were media reports that claimed a 24-year-old Ugandan maid in Dubai had died mysteriously with her employers claiming she had fallen from their flat’s balcony, before, succumbing to excessive bleeding.
Earlier this week, Annet Kirabira, the executive director of Rahab Uganda, an organisation that reports cases of human trafficking, said she had through different interactions learnt of a number of maids that are mistreated in Arab countries but are stuck because they have no money to return home.

She said many of them were now distressed and want to return home.

In July, The Times of Oman ran a story that quoted the Ethiopian Airlines country manager, Sami Muctar as saying that there had been an increased influx of Ugandan maids into Oman with many flights carrying between 15 and 25 young women into Muscat on every flight out of Kampala to Oman.

Amuru residents disguise as refugees

By CISSY MAKUMBI

AMURU. More than 200 residents of Atiak Sub-county, Amuru District, are reported to have fled their homes and registered as South Sudan refugees in order to access free services. According to the authorities, it is alleged that majority of the disguised refugees have dual citizenship.
In an interview with Daily Monitor on Tuesday, Amuru District chairperson, Mr Michael Lakony, said they have received reports that residents in Bibia Parish have joined refugee settlement camps in the district in a bid to access free services offered.
“We are working on modalities of getting them out, but it is a bit tricky. Some have both Uganda and South Sudan national identity cards which make the process complex,” Mr Lakony said. He said they have contacted the local leaders to help identify residents who have taken advantage of the situation in the area.
He added: “Once we get their full identities, we shall work with the Office of the Prime Minister to evict them from the camps.”
The Atiak Sub-county councillor, Mr Wilfred Odiya, said reports show that locals are masquerading as refugees although the numbers are not alarming.
The refugee desk officer, Mr Totus Jogo, dismmised the allegations saying they were not aware of the scenario.
He, however, said there are a few individuals of the Aringa tribe who were masquerading as South Sudan refugees but they were arrested.

Number of refugees
Currently, there are 180,000 refugees in the district following unrest in the youngest nation of South Sudan that started in 2013.

editorial@ug.nationmedia.com

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No looming debt crisis in Africa - AfDB

Kampala.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has dismissed fears of a possible debt crisis in Africa saying most of the countries in the continent are still in sustainable debt level to their Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The pace at which public debt has increased in most African countries has been significantly higher in the recent years attracting concerns from the international community and the local public that countries are headed for debt crisis.

Increase in external debt is as a result of governments in the region stepping up borrowing for infrastructure development to foster long term economic growth and development.

Speaking during the Collaborative Africa Budget Reform Initiative (CABRI) workshop on strengthening Uganda’s public debt management capabilities at Kampala Serena Hotel on Monday, the AfDB chief economist Uganda country office, Dr Alex Rwabizambuga, said: “We should not be alarmed that debt crisis is looming in Africa.

Countries are still at sustainable debt levels to GDP ratios, but this does not mean that countries should continue borrowing so much without controls.”

Debt ratios to GDP
Giving the state of debt ratios to GDP in four East African countries, Dr Rwabizambuga said: “In the financial year 2016/17, the ratio of Uganda’s public debt to GDP is projected at 37 per cent, Kenya’s at 52 per cent, Tanzania’s is 37 per cent and Rwanda’s is 34.9 per cent.”

Dr Rwabizambuga said Uganda’s external public debt, largely concessional, has mainly been fuelled by increased public infrastructure investments in the oil, transport and energy sectors.
However, he said Uganda’s risk of external debt distress remains low and is the same with her peers in East Africa.

Mr Fredrick Matyama, the commissioner at the department of debt management in the ministry of Finance, said Uganda is borrowing from external sources for infrastructure development and domestically for paying of interest on the debt that had been borrowed in the last financial years.

Reduced dependence
Unlike in the past when funds from donor community in form of development assistance constituted the higher percentage of the Budget, Uganda government has reduced its dependence on aid to finance the Budget with government now financing 85 per cent of it using domestically generated revenues from taxes.

Mr Matyama said: “Uganda has changed from concessional basis (from multilateral institutions) to non-concessional basis from outside financial institutions. We still have a challenge of filling the gap of 15 per cent, so we borrow to provide services needed,” he said.

What next
Going forward, Mr Matyama said there is need to create central debt management institution with front, middle and back office to do analysis on how the country should be borrowing and from which source.

The four- day CABRI workshop is being attended by both government officers from Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda and South Africa, Capital Markets Authority and representatives from the private sector.

The managing director Stanbic Bank, Mr Patrick Mweheire, said currently there is a lot of emphasis on debt not focusing on savings. “The level of saving in this country is still very low; so we should emphasise domestic saving,” he said.

Head of public finance management programmes at CABRI, Ms Aarti Shah, said the organistion provides platform between peer learning and allows countries to carry out critical policy reforms for best practice in fiscal policy formulation, public finance management and financial stability.

Hunger ravages villages in Kitgum

KITGUM. At least 12 people in Labolo and Nakwanya-Zaire villages in Orom Sub-county, Kitgum District, have died of hunger in the last one month, councillor Quirino Olum has reported.

“We have lost 12 people as a result of hunger. Many people lost their crops in the recent dry spell.” Mr Olum said.
The councillor made the remarks while receiving relief items that included maize grains, salt, soap, sorghum seeds, maize seeds and cassava cuttings donated to the affected communities by Irene Gleeson Foundation on Tuesday.
He said the most affected villages are Labolo and Nakwanya-Zaire all in Akurumo parish.

The Nakwanya –Zaire village chairperson, Alfred Onek Akin, confirmed the deaths, adding that the district should come to their rescue before more lives are lost.

“In my village, five people have so far died while seven others in the neighboring Labolo village passed away as a result of hunger,” he said.

Mr Marcelin Ali, 56, a resident of Nakwanya-Zaire said residents in the affected villages have begun hunting for wild fruits in order to survive. He appleaded for government intervention.

The Kitgum Resident District Commissioner, Mr William Komakech, said they are aware and have tasked the local authorities to compile the list of the affected families.

The numbers
12
Total number of people who have died of hunger in Kitgum District.

editorial@ug.nationmedia.com

Two-year-old with hole in heart

In 2014, Lydia Nambozo gave birth to a bouncing baby that she would later name Praise Apio.

However, there was something about Apio, 2, that seemed a little abnormal. She would cry non-stop and could barely rest even at night.

The cries persisted, forcing Nambozo to seek medical advice from Peter Lwabi, a senior pediatrician at Mulago hospital.

At Mulago hospital, Nambozo received the worst news that could take her through a tortuous two-year journey trying to save her daughter’s life.

It was traumatising because Nambozo had during delivery lost one of the babies that arrived before Apio.
Apio’s twin sister, Nambozo says could have died because of stress that she experienced before and after delivery.

“I suffered from a serious bout of malaria during my pregnancy. It was hard for me because even in sickness I had to work to survive,’’ she says with a shaking voice.
This, she suspects put her under intense stress that later impacted her pregnancy.
Nambozo, according to medical reports, went into early labour which resulted in producing Apio as a premature, a condition Lwabi says is when a baby is produced before its due date.

This, Lwabi says, could have been a result of Nambozo’s sickness because malaria and pregnancy don’t mix.
For close to a month, Apio survived in an incubator and it is around the same time that she was diagnosed with an atrial septal defect, a condition that creates an aerated hole within someone’s heart.

Delicate situation
Namboozo’s situation, according to Stephen Lwanga, a professional counsellor, is quite delicate and could lead to devastating effects such mental illness.
The father of her children has abandoned the family and has not provided any assistance even when it was most needed.

However, she is not comfortable discussing why he husband turned his back on her at this hour of need.
Namboozo is financially challenged and cannot raise the Shs19m that doctors have said will be needed to treat Apio.

She needs an operation before her situation worsens and any delay might present more dangers.
Apio will need to go through an operation to correct the abnormality.

About Atrial Septal Defect

It is a condition that creates “hole” in the wall that separates the top two chambers of the heart.
This defect allows oxygen-rich blood to leak into the oxygen-poor blood chambers in the heart.
What causes it?

Every child is born with an opening between the upper heart chambers. It’s a normal fetal opening that allows blood to detour away from the lungs before birth. After birth, the opening is no longer needed and usually closes or becomes very small within several weeks or months.

Sometimes the opening is larger than normal and doesn’t close after birth. In most children the cause isn’t known. Some children can have other heart defects along Atrial Septal Defect.

How does Atrial Septal Defect affect my child?
Children with Atrial Septal Defect often have no symptoms. If the opening is small, it won’t cause symptoms because the heart and lungs don’t have to work harder. If the opening is large, the only abnormal finding may be a murmur (noise heard with a stethoscope) and other abnormal heart sounds. The highest risk among such children is to the blood vessels in the lungs because more blood than normal is being pumped there.