UPC demands resignation over teachers’ crisis

The Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) has sounded an alarm over what it calls “a constitutional rupture within the country’s education and public service sectors.” It also describes the government’s handling of the teachers’ crisis as “a national emergency” that threatens the very cohesion of the state.

Addressing journalists, representatives of civil society and citizens in Tororo, the Assistant National Secretary for Mobilisation of UPC, J. J. Opondo, said the current situation can no longer be dismissed as routine political contestation.

“What Uganda faces at this hour is nothing less than a constitutional rupture, a crisis precipitated by the willful neglect of our teachers, the abandonment of our children, and the imperilling of the very institutions upon which our Republic was founded,” he stated.

Opondo anchored his remarks in the Constitution of 1995, reminding the government that Article 30 enshrines the right to education as a fundamental entitlement of every Ugandan child, while Article 40 safeguards the rights of workers to just and favourable remuneration, to dignity in their labour, and to collective organisation.

“When these rights are trampled when teachers languish unpaid, when classrooms stand deserted, when parents are left helpless while their children’s future is held hostage the issue ceases to be administrative. It becomes constitutional,” he warned.

He condemned what he called the contemptuous conduct of the Ministry of Public Service, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Education in the ongoing debacle, saying their response had not merely been inadequate but amounted to dereliction of constitutional duty.

“To threaten striking teachers with dismissal, while failing to address the root cause of their plight, is to invert the very purpose of public service. It is a dereliction so grave that resignation is not a matter of political courtesy; it is a matter of constitutional necessity,” Opondo declared.

The UPC official said the matter had gone far beyond a sectoral dispute. “This is a national emergency,” he stressed. “An education system in paralysis threatens the cohesion of the State itself. It hollows out our human capital, undermines social stability, and perpetuates generational poverty.

A government that cannot keep its teachers in class, or its children at their desks, Opondo says, forfeits not only moral legitimacy but constitutional standing.”

Accordingly, UPC demands the immediate resignation of the ministers responsible for the crisis and called for an emergency session of Parliament to legislate both immediate salary resolutions and structural reforms that would prevent such crises from recurring.

Opondo contrasted the current situation with Uganda’s past under UPC administrations, asserting that the party once stood for dignity in labour and efficiency in service delivery.

“Let history remind us,” he said, adding, “Under UPC, the State honoured its workers. We built Mulanda and other Health Centres in every sub-county, Nabuyoga for example as a dipping and animal treatment centre, Nyakesi ginnery, teachers’ training colleges, public buses from Tororo to Busolwe, and a network of industries and cooperatives that paid wages promptly and gave dignity to labour.”

He said farmers during that time were supported with treated seeds, incentives and tools from Busitema, not engaged in importing poverty in the form of hoes and substandard things from foreign markets. “That was a government that worked for its people,” he added.

The current situation, Opondo argues, stands in stark contrast to that record. “Today, by contrast, even boda-bodas cannot be commissioned for public transport, while our UPE, USE and UACE children and students are languishing at home without instruction,” he lamented. “This is governance in collapse, and collapse cannot be managed; it must be corrected.”

In a rallying call to citizens, Opondo has urged all affected parents to rise in solidarity with teachers and local government workers. “This is not their struggle alone. It is a national struggle for constitutional integrity, for the right of every Ugandan child to learn, and for the restoration of public service to its rightful purpose.”

He addressed the government directly: “The time for platitudes has expired. The time for phased promises is past. Immediate intervention is not optional, it is mandatory

Opondo warned that failure to act promptly would deepen the crisis and might compel Ugandans, under the aegis of their constitutional rights, to consider lawful civic measures to redeem their Republic.