The Executive Director of Uganda Bureau of Statistics Dr. Chris N Mukiza has urged religious and cultural leaders to work together to amplify President’s message of universal household income generation and wealth creation across the country.
Mukiza cautioned the leaders to mobilize and sensitize ordinary Ugandans on the need to balance between endless prayer sessions and work because exclusively depending on the former alone won’t end poverty in Uganda.
“You can’t be rich by praying only. You need to tell our people to balance work and prayers because there is no way God is suddenly going to just make you rich simply because you prayed a lot for the entire day and entire week without being productive doing something,”Mukiza stressed.
“Pastor Sserwadda please go and help us to sensitize our people to realize that besides praying, they must get involved in work and be productive because that is the only way to improve their welfare. It won’t be achieved through prayers only. Equally true, people worship their kings a lot and I implore all cultural institutions’ representatives here present to emulate the leadership of Buganda Kingdom who have chosen to use their influence to rally people into development initiatives like emwanyi terimba [aimed at enlarging coffee farming] which is making wonders helping our people to overcome poverty.”he added.
Mukiza implored the recipient institutions to strictly use the gadgets for the intended purpose of improving collection of administrative data while ensuring that their staff don’t resort to using the tablets to make phone calls and generally engage in personal usage of the same.
During the hand over of more than 4,050 tablets and computers to Inter-Religious Council of Uganda (IRCU) and representatives from the Umukhuka, Bunyoro Kitara and Rwenzururu cultural institutions Mukiza encouraged the leaders to support and strengthen the collection of administrative data in their respective geographical regions. He said although the tablets were used for census work in 2024, the tablets are still in very good condition.
Dr. Mukiza said that once the collection of administrative data, which religious and cultural institutions have the leverage to effectively engage in, becomes adequately modernized in Uganda, data collection for future census exercises will become much easier because such data can effectively and safely be relied upon to reduce on the work enumerators have to do in the field during census exercise. He said this is already happening in countries where administrative data collection is well advanced.
He gave the example of accurate records being kept on the number of births and deaths plus immigration -related statistics kept well UBOS will in future require much less resources to carry out the census.
He challenged institutions which received the tablets and computers to always involve and work with UBOS to ensure quality assurance and ethical compliance for the administrative data they collect.
He commended Buganda Kingdom for being a model partner for UBOS and implored the other cultural institutions to emulate what the Mengo-based leadership is doing. He demonstrated how Buganda Kingdom has been able to utilize the hundreds of the donated tablets UBOS gave them months earlier to leverage the Bureau’s data to compile and produce a high quality publication titled ‘Manya e Ssaza/know your county,’ whose second edition he said had just been released.
Receiving 3,500 tablets on behalf of IRCU,Presiding Apostle of Born Again Federation Dr. Joseph Sserwadda revealed that there are 26,730 churches under his federation across Uganda,
Sserwadda pledged to accelerate collection, production, processing, analysis, storage and dissemination of data relating to services like education, health and others by the seven different religious affiliations
According to SSerwadda IRCU has in place a statistics committee whose members UBOS will continue to train and build their capacity to effectively carry out qualitative data collection while adhering to data collection ethical principles such as confidentiality when entrusted with people’s private information.
Sserwadda appreciated the ongoing relationship between IRCU and UBOS whose officials expect that the Council’s member religious denominations will now be able to generate and have in place data that is more credible and authentic, as a result of close collaboration with the Bureau.
Dr. Aisha Kasolo of the Presidential CEO Forum), Dr. Rogers Mate of NPA, Dr. Sserwadda of IRCU, Benson T Kule (the Prime Minister for Rwenzururu), EPRC’s Swaibu Mbowa and Umukhuka’s Wanduyi Masiga (Deputy Prime Minister) unanimously thanked UBOS for capacitating them towards the performance
National Planning Authority, Presidential CEO Forum and Makerere-based EPRC received 50 tablets.