Kampala — AKELLO Kevin Omongin is the LC3 vice chairperson of Katakwi Town Council. Elvis Basudde interviewed her about the challenges faced by the leaders and the people of Katakwi. Below are the excerpts.

Question: What is the major challenge faced by leaders in Katakwi town council?

Answer: There is a small revenue base following the scrapping of the graduated tax. This makes it difficult for leaders to give the community some services.

The main source of revenue for the council is the taxi park and market collections. The other source is the abattoir. The revenue collected from these sources is too small, making the town council lag behind in development. We are not in position to offer our people satisfactory services.

There are many NGOs in the district. How have they benefited the town council?

The NGOs do their work in the rural sub-counties, and not in the town council. The NGOs have penetrated almost all the nine sub-counties in the district and ignored the town council.

How is hygiene and sanitation like in the town council?

Deplorable! The town council has garbage heaps everywhere. We are supposed to use local funds to employ manpower to clean, but we do not have the funds.

What about the health facilities?

We have a Health Centre IV in Katakwi town council but it is under-staffed. There are many patients, but no personnel to attend to them.

Sometimes we run short of medicine. We also lack equipment. Some of the patients have to travel to Soroti, over 40km away, to access health care. Those who cannot afford to travel end up dying.

We also do not have enough anti-retroviral drugs and some people start the treatment when it is too late for them to survive.

How are you fairing in education?

Our performance in the national exams is always poor. We have only one secondary school, which stops at O' level.

We are starting A' level this year, but no students have applied so far.

Many students prefer to attend schools in Soroti. We are coming up with by-laws, which are meant to improve education in the area.

What is being done to address these issues?

The LC5 chairman promised to give the district some money to buy seeds and cassava cuttings in order to promote food security and improve nutrition. Our MP, Charles Olenyi, is also trying to lobby for hospital equipment.

Recently, we got sh20m and four motorcycles from International Alliance HIV/AIDS in Uganda. The donation was to help us in the fight against HIV/AIDS. With an estimated population of 145,000 people, Katakwi has 5,000 people living with HIV/AIDS.