The Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) is seeking for an additional Shs10.465bn to conduct examinations in the COVID-19 envionment.
While appearing before Parliament’s Budget Committee to defend the supplementary budget request, Dan Odongo (pictured), the UNEB Executive Secretary said the extra Shs10.465bn will help them fulfill and observe the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) set up to contain the spread of COVID-19.
According to UNEB, there are 1,181,940 candidates registered to undertake examinations this year including; PLE-749,807, UCE-333,766 and UACE-98,367.
Odongo defended the supplementary funding arguing that before the pandemic, the Board required spacing of 1.2meters but this distance has to be adjusted to 2meters to conform with the SOPs, a development that would require more invigilators to cover the additional rooms to be used.
“The supervision and invigilation of the examinations is very crucial in order to ensure that the examinations are taken by all candidates in accordance with the rules and regulations on the conduct of examinations,” said Odong.
For Primary Leaving Examinations that will be conducted in 2 days, UNEB plans to hire additional 19,910 invigilators with each fetching Shs48,500 bringing the total to Shs1.931bn.
In Uganda Certificate Examinations, UNEB plans to hire additional 8,703 and each would be paid Shs48,500 bringing total to Shs5.909bn while UACE will need 4,747 invigilators to oversee average 10days of examinations at a cost of Shs2.302bn.
After the examinations, UNEB has also planned to increase its work force during the marking exercise with Shs322.2m required to procure 120 hand washing facilities at Shs36M, 120 temperature guns at Shs60M with each temperature gun set to cost Shs500,000.
The Executive Secretary said that the extra workforce is needed to decongest the marking centers to increase from the current 10 to 30 which would require procurement of extra materials.
However, Okoth Othieno (west Budama North) asked UNEB to explain why schools are asking parents to contribute money for COVID tests and examinations yet the Board is also seeking money to facilitate pandemic examinations.
He also questioned the price of temperature guns saying, “I am not comfortable with temperature gun of Shs500,000; average market goes for Shs200,000. Ministry of Education supplied temperature guns at Shs70,000.”
Charles Illukor (Kumi County) raised queries on the price of sanitizers, “Which sanitizer do you have unit cost of Shs1.2m. The new normal that has come, instead of increasing the number of people, we would put cameras in these classes and have one person monitoring, instead we are going back to increase number of people.”
In response, Odong distanced himself from the new charges asked by schools.
“We aren’t aware that schools are asking money for COVID-19. For invigilation the issue of invigilation is mandate for UNEB. So schools asking for more funds are asking illegally and not under mandate of UNEB,” he said.
