WE HAVE all been in that restaurant, bar, or lounge and had to take time at some point during the evening to be creative with a bottle top or wet napkin.

Innovation hits you after you have received your first serving and your coffee or tea spills out of the cup onto the table without your intervention. If you’re lucky then the staff themselves present the solution as they take your orders.

Few of you stop to question the hygiene risk involved in having the person about to handle your food precede that by squeezing a bit of trash between their fingers and then inserting it between your table leg and the ground. Sometimes you also get involved with your own digits.

After establishing that the table is not wobbly any more, they wipe their hands off on something right there, take your order, and then bring you your meal, right?

You rarely figure out why, later in the day, you have a stomach upset or worse. It’s our life.

We have also, many of us, bought our own furniture for domestic use and taken it home with pride and joy having tested it carefully at the showroom. I say “at” the showroom because the majority of you out here make these purchases at roadside showrooms.

As a young man, it took me a while to work out why my furniture never quite stood still at home. Back in my day we bought settees either at Makerere-Bwaise or Bukoto outside ‘the flats.’

In the process I entered into many feuds with carpenters, chasing them down to keep shaving bits off the legs and eventually blacklisting and bad-mouthing them.

It wasn’t their fault – their workshop and ‘showroom’ floors were uneven so their products stood straight on that ground. It was OUR FAULT for having even, levelled floors.

Nobody cared much except my wife and I – owners of rocking chairs and dining room table see-saws we could not comfortably use.

My dislike for most artisans turned into hatred for some – like the plumber who installed an expensive bathtub I had saved up for over many months but in the process thought he was more clever than the manufacturers who had created a snazzy drainage system.

He plugged that out to create space because he needed to use brick, mortar and cement to install the tub rather than use the stainless steel stands it came with. He only survived major bodily harm by not trying too hard to collect the balance of his payment.

The scenarios are many, occur daily, and have affected all of us so much so that any Ugandan family out here can create their own TV series about artisans that will run for many years – thirty minutes per episode.

So you’d think we would have held a national Thanksgiving Prayer ceremony over the enactment of the TVET Act 2025 this year.

Instead, due to our general mediocre and highly politicised approach to life, there are some people griping – seated in their rickety chairs and taking coffee out of those metallic tea pots that MUST spill as they pour.

As usual, traders and artisans are already talking about the wrong things: “We are already paying for permits to operate workshops from the local governments. Introducing individual permits will hurt the individual earnings our people make,” said Bbira Bossa, mbu ‘Chairperson of Juakalis in Uganda’ (according to the media).

He rightly says, though, that the government should work with existing associations to identify and sanction errant artisans.

Not only that – we ordinary people suffering at the hands of artisans and handy men should ensure we only hire those who are regulated, and when things go wrong, go for remediation.

The TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) Act has been urgently needed since the beginning of time. Only disorganised societies ignore such things.

In this context, a few years ago I heard someone explain ‘Standards’ quite simply as: “The reason why you can get your TV and furniture of any size into your house through the door.

It’s not a joke; I have visited homes where – again – some clever fellow decided to ‘innovate’ and created doorways that restricted your entry if you had just had a heavy meal.

This new TVET Act will fix such idiocy and make our lives better – including the artisans themselves, as they will certainly earn more money.

They will also face fewer risks from clients inspecting their finished work and asking why the TV bracket they installed onto the wall is skewed at an angle and shouting questions like: “How the hell do you NOT know what a spirit level is?!”

Go and read the Act and the purpose for which it has been created.

Again, in more organized societies, vocational education provides a much more lucrative career for young people than some of the degrees and certificates we obsess over.

Ask yourself, personally, how many accountants you pay out of your pocket versus carpenters, plumbers and the like.

The TVET Act and Policy will build up professions that will make society more orderly, if implemented right – and that implementation includes you and I.

Roadside artisans need to be a thing of the past – which is why I rejoiced when the Kampala Capital City Authority got rid of the Bukoto Flats ‘showroom’.

Roadside artisans also refers to all those who are not licensed, whose professionalism goes unchecked, who don’t care about hygiene, and so on and so forth.

The TVET Act 2025 does not stop with the Ministry of Education – all other government departments must be involved; providing the right working environment, creating customer protection systems, and more.

The TVET Act 2025 should work end-to-end including you and I taking our children through vocational education with the confidence that there can be a very good career ahead for them if the entire system plays its part. Simply put, we all need to Be Serious about vocational education and services.

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Simon Kaheru

www.skaheru.com
@skaheru