Authorities in the eastern Ugandan district of Butaleja are grappling with the high rate of school children who drop out to work in rice plantations.

By Joseph Elunya, Mbale

The school dropout rate in Butaleja, a district located 166 kilometers east of the capital Kampala, stands at 30 percent.

“It’s a real battle we are faced with. The people of Butaleja prefer sending their children to work in rice plantations rather than to school,’ says Richard Gulume, the resident district commissioner.

Drop outs
 “I dropped out from primary school in 2006 to work in people’s gardens to raise money to support myself and my parents. I don’t regret it, because in one day I gained five euros,” says Musa Muhima, a 17-year-old boy. “How else could I get that kind of money?”

Muhima says he was forced to drop out of Nampologoma Primary School because his parents could not afford to cater to his and the rest of his family’s needs.

“Working in this place [Doko Rice Scheme] is better than stealing. If I was not doing this work, I would perhaps be a thief by now. Thank God I can now raise enough money to support my parents back home,” says Muhima, who intends to use any extra money he makes to get married.

Low grades in school
Mohamed Asacha, another child labourer, says he dropped out of school in 2004 because he was scoring low grades. “I got fed up with school because I was performing poorly in every exam. So I looked for something that I was good at, and that’s how I ended up in the plantation.

At first my parents were opposed to it, but they changed their mind after I started returning home with food.” Asacha says he doesn’t regret leaving school.

Parental view
Hatib Wasige, a parent, says the money offered by farmers lures children from neighbouring schools to work in the rice plantations. “Farmers offer them five euros to transplant rice from the nursery beds. You find around eight thousand children working here during planting season in April. That’s why schools are all empty at that time of the year.”

In Wasige’s opinion the local authorities should come up with a bylaw to ban children from working in the rice schemes.

Local actions
“We have already passed a bylaw in which schoolchildren are not allowed to work in rice plantations unless it’s during holiday times,” says District Commissioner Gulume.

Meanwhile, the district performed the worst of all districts in Uganda during recent national primary school leaving examinations. Only 98 of the 3800 pupils who sat for these exams passed in the first division.