On the rainy day of August 10, 2024, across the Kampala metropolitan area, Uganda woke to bad news of a fatal landslide that struck the Kiteezi garbage dump site in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, and left 35 people dead, according to a statement by the Uganda Police.

Well, it sounds like a landslide according to my write-up, but in actual sense, it was a heap of garbage improperly managed by authorities that collapsed and killed 35 people, 12 of whom were young people.

What a shame! People are dying of garbage in a country with a sane administration, a democratic government, but a dormant public sector that earns very huge salaries and allowances!

Is it the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end of a dormant public sector?

A dormant and inefficient public sector leads to a decline in governance, which has ripple effects across the system. It stymies attempts to improve core services and subsequent unpopularity of the NRM regime that may lead to its eventual collapse.

Public institutions need to be utmost proactive and sensitive to the desires and safety of citizens for proper governance, functioning systems, and efficient service delivery.

Under such circumstances, in some countries with patriotic citizens and functioning institutions, the concerned persons for the negligent behavior that resulted in the fiasco in Kitezi were supposed to resign themselves from duty for inefficiency and negligence and ask for forgiveness. Unfortunately, resigning public servants or politicians is not the order of the day in Uganda.

This has made degeneracy in public service and public administration inevitable. The end result is always inefficiency. Is this yet to end?

Luckily enough, the president of Uganda, HE Yoweri K. Museveni, this week, while acting upon an investigation done by the Inspectorate of Government (IGG), dismissed with disgrace the KCCA executive director Dorothy Kisaka, together with her deputy David Luyimbazi, and the director for Public Health Daniel Okello, and ordered the CID to investigate the trio for criminal negligence.

Uganda is in urgent need of public sector and administrative reform to prevent a slide toward an increasingly dysfunctional, corrupt, and insecure system. The NRM should champion these reforms to enable an efficient flow of administration and service delivery.

There cannot be democracy without efficient flow of administration and service delivery. The weakening public sector despises the NRM regime of democratic odds.

Such negligence, dishonesty, and degeneracy have been notable at every rank of the public sector, right from local governments to the central government, which leaves the public sector at stake and service delivery in disarray.

Are we yet to see politicians and public officials starting to resign for inefficiencies? I don’t think so, unless there is an overhaul and immediate reforms!

So, is it the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end to a dormant public sector?