Five vehicles leave Uganda’s Butebo struggling to oversee roads and services

Butebo’s engineering department has neither a vehicle nor a motorcycle to inspect road works, even though the Ugandan district receives Shs1 billion under the road fund for maintenance and operating costs. Across the district administration, just five vehicles remain in service. Departments must share them to reach schools, health facilities and farming communities, according to Daily Monitor Uganda, which reported officials’ accounts directly.

The shortage affects a district with 171,433 residents, according to the 2024 census. Engineering, education, production and administration are among the departments most affected. Their work involves travelling beyond the headquarters to check projects and public services. Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Emmanuel Awilo said transport becomes particularly difficult when several departments need to make field visits at the same time, leaving political and technical officials competing for the same small fleet.

A road budget without inspection transport

District chairperson Sam Keddi told the newspaper that vehicles acquired when Butebo was separated from Pallisa District in 2017 have broken down, while money for repairs is lacking. The district engineer said all five vehicles handed over by Pallisa are now out of service. Three of the five vehicles currently running came from the central government. Officials said a Board of Survey assessment had recommended selling most of the grounded fleet.

Keddi said the five working vehicles must serve multiple departments, making transport a serious obstacle to monitoring district programmes.

For the engineering team, that constraint extends to supervising maintenance across 55 kilometres of district roads. The district engineer urged the administration to consider funding at least one vehicle. He also identified weather and delays in obtaining an excavator from Bugembe as obstacles to road work. The district’s maintenance allocation therefore sits alongside practical difficulties in both carrying out work and checking it in the field.

Staffing shortages deepen the pressure

Transport is only one part of the service-delivery problem. District Health Officer Lawrence Onyuu said health facilities have 132 medical and support workers against a requirement of 468, putting staffing below 30 percent. Butebo has only one doctor, stationed at Butebo Health Centre IV. Some facilities have been upgraded without receiving their full staffing complement. Keddi said the district was working with the Ministry of Health on staffing, infrastructure and medicine shortages.

Schools face a similar mix of resource and oversight constraints. Acting district education officer Josephine Kanyi cited shortages of teachers, classrooms and pit latrines, as well as difficulty travelling to schools for inspections. Keddi said his administration had made closer supervision a priority during its first four months and reported improved staff attendance. Those efforts depend partly on officials being able to reach the services they oversee.

Recruitment offers no immediate shortcut. Awilo said Butebo had gone almost three years without hiring beyond replacement appointments, while insufficient funding for salaries had left several senior officers in acting roles. He said the district would seek clearance to advertise posts after the required wage assessment and process. The next steps to watch are that recruitment clearance, the proposed disposal of broken-down vehicles and whether funds are allocated for engineering transport.