From the time we are born, our parents have a great desire for us to have the best life; in a third world country one of the imminent ways to attain this is to give your child a good education. It is goes without saying therefore that the child has to study hard, get good grades and get into the best university possible preferably on a government scholarship.
In 2005, the Ministry of Education opted to sponsor science-based courses in the public universities. The good thing is that if you are brilliant in school, the teachers usually encourage you to take on science subjects like physics, mathematics, chemistry and biology so a good percentage follows this advice. Even when the results for national examinations are out, most of the high scoring kids say they want to become Engineers, Doctors, Accountants and lawyers.
So we burst our guts in school trying to outdo one another getting private tutoring (for those whose parents can afford) to be at the top of the class. And when our efforts pay off, then we get into university to do the profession courses. While at university, the government tries its level best; it pays allowances and requires one to get industrial training so as to get exposure to our line of chosen professions.
In most instances a profession requiring a high standard of education brings with it a handsome income and respect, that’s a fallacy that is prevalent in this country. Most of the people in the land surveying profession are actually servants; servants of a number of things, not necessarily in order of listing:
Ø The institutions governing the profession (Institute of Surveyors of Uganda and the Surveyors Registration Board.
Ø The weak laws governing the profession
Ø The truly wealthy
Ø The elders in the profession
Ø The quacks among others
Today I will elaborate on the quacks. The quacks are usually chainmen who are used in the field to do such jobs as to hold the reflector, clear bushes for better visibility et cetera. They start by calling themselves assistant surveyors; then the assistant becomes silent and lo & behold the profession gets a problem. Through real life they develop a kind of street smart canniness which enables them seize opportunities; after all not many people know a role of the surveyor. They usually charge very little money, do poor quality work, and sometimes acquire individuals land titles and transfer the titles to themselves thus increasing the public’s hatred for the real surveyors.
This hatred has been witnessed by the way some surveyors have been chopped to death using machetes when they went to carry out field work in Eastern Uganda, in Central Uganda, in 2009, a surveyor’s car and instruments were burnt and the surveyor clobbered he only survived death by giving away all the money he had!
