NEGLECT OF LAWS SLOWS SERVICE DELIVERY IN ARUA DISTRICT

A group photo of the stakeholders after the dialogue. (PHOTO BY EREMA)

By Erema George

Arua city

Lack of proper enforcement of laws and policies has been identified as a key gap affecting service delivery in Arua district with stakeholders now calling for measures to bridge this gap.

The concerns raised during a one day intensive dialogue organized by Selfless Compassion Initiative (SCI), a women led non-governmental organization with partners, aims at strengthening security and service delivery for sustainable political, social, and economic development in the district.

Meanwhile lack of adherence to policies, laws and community ordinances is often times attributed to weak or unfair enforcement, a lack of trust in leaders and poor understanding or awareness of the rules, Arua district speaker, Demos Pariyo noted that a better representation by the elected leaders plays a key role in ensuring pace and security that can improve service delivery;

“When these services do not reach the common person who has put us the or whom we are supposed to serve, we start to have conflict and if we are able to deliver service it means we prevent conflict and we will be able to have peace and security,” Pariyo noted.

Ayikoru Peace Anguyo, a human rights officer in charge of education emphasizes on proper accountability by the leaders;

“As leaders, duty bearers i usually see we are not accountable to the community, you feel what you do is right. Yes we have formulated these ordinances but how do we make communities to know that what we have done is to their best; you organize meetings, dialogues and at the end of the day thy will know that you are accountable, you also make them accountable,” Anguyo noted.

A human rights lawyer Alesi Majorine says there’s need to have internal resource mobilization to do civic engagements in the local communities;

“We need to start resourcing for our own selves internally to sole our own problems, we need to do a lot of civic engagements in our local population, bring this knowledge about the laws into these raw communities, and we need to address mob justice,” Alesi stated.

Ayikoru Jean Longo, a community development officer for disability and elderly in Arua district and disability inclusion activist describes peace and security a key factor of development;

“If we are not going to have peace and have maximum security then we shall have no development in our land, so we need to embrace peace and security and make sure that development sets in,” Ayikoru said.

Insecurity, crime and gender based violence GBV act as sever barriers to the development of a gin government or local government crating a cycle that drains human potential, halts economic investment and strains public resources.