Professionals are often a forgotten and neglected constituency in a national electoral campaigns

As Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Council campaigns get heated in Uganda, the nature of campaign promises progressively exposes the little attention given to issues concerning the reliable and faithful professional workforce. Candidates do not seem to remember that these professionals who run most of government (local and central) and private sector technical programmes also have unique professional needs that ought to be attended to. They have votes too; and they can influence a few more. They need an enabling environment; appropriate and sufficient resources to work with and easy access to reliable ICT support facilities. These would empower them to “do their thing” as the leaders harness credit and political mileage for the guaranteed resultant positive achievements.

The required environment should be composed of, among others, good regulatory frameworks and associated enforcement strategies. Professions world over are regulated. A person should go through a given form of initial training and subsequent periodic re-training (continuous professional development) to acquire and maintain specific knowledge and skills sets, and must practice within specified ethical bounds in order to qualify to be categorized as a member of a profession. The mandate and guidelines for regulation of professional practice, including composition of the body of regulators, is usually defined in an Act of Parliament. Such laws must be kept up to date to match needs of the era and for global compliance. Membership to professional regulatory bodies should therefore be appropriately constituted and must be given independence to do their work within defined professional and legal bounds without unnecessary interference. Such interference happens either directly through refusal to appoint; meddling with and into the affairs of the regulatory bodies or indirectly through appointing incompetent people into the regulatory authority. Furthermore, deliberate unnecessary delays in the processes of reviewing and updating the related (parent) law passes for negative interference.

Professional regulatory authorities are intended to and will usually protect the consumers of professional services and associated goods from being duped to settle for less or fake services from dishonest professionals and masqueraders (quacks). This way, they would avoid suffering great losses through paying for services that would not meet their demands and moreover could result in horrible consequences! Failure of government to provide an appropriate and supportive environment or empowerment of these regulatory bodies and the professionals to excel is, subtle though it is, very harmful to medium and long term national development agenda. As part of the regulatory legal framework, all other laws governing and guiding practice in the trade of a given profession also ought to be updated regularly and effectively enforced.

The professional, whether in public or private sector, should be appropriately supported, protected and facilitated to carryout their technical functions. These could be provided through, among others, commensurate remuneration; reliable, easy to access ICT services; appropriate technical equipment; adequate staffing; respect of professional opinion and support for continuous professional development. Professionals are extremely useful in guiding policy direction, budgetary prioritisation and implementation strategies of government and private sector plans if appropriately involved. It is therefore my considered opinion that every professional regulatory body should be supported to create a think tank arm that will periodically provide evidence-based, professionally-crafted guidance to government and the public on local, regional and global matters related to their profession. Such a team could also propose and/or vet special national awards to professionals thus eliminating politically influenced, non-professional and undeserved praises.

A national leadership that will work to promote the professionals and support them to be high global performers will surely experience a high quality service delivery and a positive trade balance, as direct contributions by the professionals. Such leaders would most likely cover good grounds towards delivering the promises made in their campaign manifestos.

This piece was published in the opinion column of the New Vision Newspaper of Wednesday 3 February 2016 under the title, “Professionals are a forgotten and neglected constituency”. Ugandans will go to the polls on 18 February 2016 to elect a President and Members of Parliament. On 24 February 2016 they will elect the local council leaders.