Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Uganda under Museveni is devoid of Ubuntu

I have been impelled to write this article by Professor Augustus Nuwagaba’s article “Govt must rectify the salary imbalance in public sector” (See Daily Monitor, Friday, September 9, 2011). Lots of money approved by MPs for community barazas; money approved for patriotism clubs yet the claim is that there is no money for salary enhancement for all civil servants.
We need to define the concept patriotism. Who actually is a patriot? Is it an MP who earns 21m a month; IGP who reportedly uses 1.3b a day whenever there’s a protest, demonstration or strike; is it a political leader whose daughter will give birth from a first world country using huge sums of taxpayers’ money when women in labour at Mulago Hospital corridors hardly find gloves, kaveera, cotton wool, surgical blade and spirit to enable them deliver babies; is it a minister whose children study from international schools but blackmails teachers with sacking when they demand a modest pay raise of Shs250,000; is it a presidential advisor who pockets millions of money including AC Vehicles and security guards when but never meet the president only to see him on TV yet medical doctors are paid 700,000, is patriotism a preserve of young men and women of one particular political inclination?
Where can the money be found? Where is the waste? A lot of government revenue is wasted on the following.
There is a tendency where government institutions especially ministries are being duplicated by the creation of various semi-autonomous authorities like KCCA, URA, NDA, UNRA, NPA, UIA, CAA, NFA, UWA, among others. There are other semi-autonomous agencies such as NWSC, NSSF, National Housing, Administrator General, etc. in addition to authorities we also have semi-autonomous Commissions. Workers in these agencies and commissions earn far higher than the conventional civil servants. Ultimately, the mainstream civil servants spend virtually all their energies thinking of how and how much they can steal to bridge the gap that exists between them and their counterparts in the named authorities. For example a fresh university graduate who enters public service starts from salary scale u4 and his/her take home is around Sh470,000. A similar fresh graduate who enters URA or NPA earns between 1.5 to 3m. if one wants to move at the same pace with their contemporaries they therefore spend virtually all the time devising means of “cutting deals” and the service delivery is poor if not negative. Mainstream civil servants are government employees and so are workers in authorities, commissions and other agencies. Why then can’t we have a uniform salary structure for all government employees?
The other area of waste is the big size of cabinet and parliament who earn very fat emoluments and the flowery title of honourable. To ascend to these positions, the academic requirement is a mere equivalent of Advanced Level. Shockingly, these MPs and ministers delude themselves that they make a bigger contribution than teachers, police, medical workers and without any shame university professors. Interestingly, quality of these “Honorable” members is wanting as some MPs may take their entire term without contributing to debate.
The other area of waste is the elevation of counties into districts and proliferation of sub counties for political expediency while duping the masses that they would bring or take services closer to the people. Instead these have ended up increasing the burden on taxpayers due to the cost of Administration like new Councils, RDC’s, DSO’s, GISO’s, Departments, vehicles and structures such as buildings. While the argument that the proliferation of districts and sub counties was meant to enhance service delivery, government health centres are devoid of essential drugs and equipment; government aided schools are on the verge of collapse because of poor performance; UPE and USE are just in name but we neither have universal primary or secondary school education because the remittance UPE for each pupil is less than Sh 2000 while USE remittance for each student is Sh41,000. In a school such Kigarama Primary School, parents are compelled to pay 15,000 for each child under UPE while at Kigarama secondary School parents part with Sh78,000 for each student under USE. One wonders if a parent pays 15,000 for his/her child and government tops up 1300 or 1500 why should government say it caters for our children?
Government violates ILO Conventions – convention 100- equal pay for equal value of work.
Doesn’t government have the money? The argument that government has no money is a hoax. There are too many taxes paid by Ugandans and URA collects huge sums of money on a daily basis. However, the problem is largely abuse and misuse of these monies through priority misplacement and imbalances in the allocation. These imbalances are largely responsible for the misappropriation and embezzlement of public funds as we highlighted in the foregoing. Our society has enough to satisfy all our needs but doesn’t have enough to satisfy our greed.
We have businessmen who pay no taxes. These happen to be business associates with the powers that be. Because they don’t pay taxes, if a genuine businessman imports or exports they are taxed through the nose. That professors cannot sponsor their children in universities where they teach is a truism. On the whole, what need to be overhauled are not the salary structures but a whole system starting from the political establishment. Many Ugandans under Museveni are devoid of Ubuntu which manifests in humanity, empathy and experiences a moral downturn.
The author is a human rights defender
Email: mpvessynuwagaba@gmail.com

No comments:

Post a Comment