Police in Maddu Town Council in Gomba District have arrested three people in charge of training enumerators for the 2024 population census exercise for selling off the enumerator job positions to those willing to pay for them.

The suspects were arrested following a tip from the Mayor of Maddu Town Council, Jane Kalumba, who made the police aware of the fraudulent acts.

Kalumba said that she went with police to St. Leonard Maddu, where these enumerators were being trained on what to do during the population census exercise, apprehended the fraudsters, and took them to police in Gomba, Kanoni.

She revealed that the three suspects refused to train people from Gomba for the enumerator positions despite them having the required academic qualifications and gave these positions to people coming from other regions like Wakiso, Kabarole, and Buikwe, yet it was illegal and wrong.

‘’When police checked the papers of those being trained on the ground, we found out that most of them are not residents of Gomba, most lacked the required academic qualifications for the job positions, some were registered under other people’s names, others had no academic papers, and others had zero knowledge on how to use smart phones and tablets too. They were also made to pay bribes to the suspects in order to get into the enumerator training in Gomba,’’ Kalumba revealed.

Kalumba added that when she questioned the suspects about the criteria they were following while giving these people the job positions, they just kept quiet, which further showed how irresponsible they were.

She asked the Uganda Bureau of Statistics to investigate all those in charge of the registration and training of enumerators in Gomba because there is too much fraud, incompetence, and sabotage from most of these people involved in the upcoming population census exercise.