By Kiyimba Bruno
Sam Bwaya is the Executive Director of the Institute of Work, Culture and Ethics , an institute that transforms knowledge into practical skills.
Bwaya has spent 22 year as an auditor, with his profession as a lawyer.
He believes that if time is valued more than money, more productive work would be achieved. Bwaya narrates an incident where one time he came to Kampala at 8:00am and found five KCCA workers filling two pot halls. He says in his view, he thought that these people were going to do that work may be in two to three hours but to his surprise, they did that work for the whole day.
“I looked out in the afternoon and saw one KCCA vehicle with a driver seated in it, the engineer of the road seated aside, two of the workers were sleeping yet the rest pretended to be working.” Bwaya narrates.
He believes that there is need of a program where learning comes from certain activities.
Bwaya says that if you accept a way of life, it will eat you. That is why he decided to construct a 40 acre based institute in Mawale village, Makulita Sub County in Luwero District, where people can take time to think of new ideas that can be developed into practical skills.
Here is a one on one with Sam Bwaya;
Watchdog: What motivated you to come up with the work ethics institute?
Sam: what you think would be the future of Uganda, people do not actually care. There are very few jobs yet the people are very many. This was automatic that I had to change people’s attitude towards work.
Watchdog: have you tried to involve government?
Sam: I tried to bring in government but government has its own ways so me and a few people we invented into this huge project which has taken millions of money.
Watchdog: How is the progress so far?
Sam: we are succeeding. If you have an institute that began this year, and at this time you have partnerships internationally, me I call it a success.
Watchdog: Any programmes soon?
Sam: We are soon hosting facilitators from Canada and the USA. Actually, in January 2018, we shall host a group from New Zealand.
Watchdog: Any challenges that you are facing?
Sam: we are facing very many problems inspite of the fact that we are moving on. The facility we have is big and expensive in an area of rural electrification grievance. Here we end up using generators which are too costly.
Secondly, the roads are too poor which makes us end up doing the work that government would be doing.
Watchdog: Any last comments?
Sam: hahhaha. Actually,yes. You see awareness is a key .we must tell people that they have a problem. We must keep on talking and talking.
People who get contracts and do poor quality work should be black listed.
Sam Bwaya has also organized competitions where individuals shall send in names of people that they feel are doing good work and deserve to be rewarded. The winners shall be awarded on the world ethics day on a function that will; take place at hotel Africana.
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