The Global
Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) by the civil society is a healthy
innovation that shows concern about the perspective of poverty on a global
scale and the wish for collective measures to see the people who are victims of
poverty get out of the vicious circle of poverty which has been witnessed by
the grandparents and the children yet the great grand children also are to
suffer poverty where many nations have been able to make a break through. When contributions are made and the World We
Want Report submitted, the issue is what next?
The fact is
that many of the countries which are locked in poverty from day one onwards
have people who have solutions out of the poverty situation, but there are two
major players to blame hence the continued poverty of our countries. These are the leaders of the countries in
question and the wrong policies which they put in place, second the donor
community, who more often than not don’t give chance to locally generated ideas
by the affected communities and instead impose on us what they think works, and
in some instances end up worsening our conditions. It is a fact that democracy is according to
my observation being dictated to our countries as the best way to govern
ourselves. Unfortunately, in many of our
countries, this democracy is easily talked about than practiced. A case in point is my mother country Uganda. The current leadership (NRM/A - Party) waged
a 5 – year bush war to overthrow an elected Government (UPC) under the guise
that it had got to power through a stolen victory, and wanted to see the
country liberated from vote thieves! 25
years down the road, the party is a chief architect of scheming to see itself
in power; many of its leaders will do whatever it takes either to bribe the
people to see the NRM politicians remain the elected people’s
representatives. We have seen a
President who came promising a fundamental change; instead being party to reversing
even the few gains the country had made!
It is ironical to see stiff competition for most of the positions within
the ruling NRM party and not have a single serious person stand to challenge
the head of the party who doubles as the head of state! It is sad that the longest ever process to
come up with a Constitution was witnessed in Uganda, but before the
Constitution could be tested, here was the head of state spearheading a change
to remove the term limits so that he rules on up to when only God knows. These are the problems which in the final
analysis lead our countries to abject poverty.
We have the
good Economists whose voice is ignored.
Time and again voices have been raised over the administrative
expenditure in Uganda,
but trust our leaders, they never listen to Economic sense, what they have in
their vocabulary is political sense! To
day we see a kraal size Parliament in Uganda! The 8th Parliament approved the
creation of 32 new districts, nine municipalities and fourteen counties which
saw the number of legislators go up from 319 to the current 375 in the 9th
Parliament. In the name of affirmative
action, each district has a woman representative, so Parliament ends up a very
big drain on the resources which are not there because the country in actual
fact gets over 60% funding (considering what the NGOs put in and other
resources not reflected in the Government budget as read by the Minister of
Finance for example, the World Vision Uganda Ministry budget grew from US$
60,026,221 in 2008 to US$ 67,345,041 in 2009; while UNICEF Uganda in 2007
received US$ 72,918,626.43 ) from external sources! Rapid population growth and persistent
systematic poverty, coupled with poor indicators in areas of health and
education, have proved serious obstacles to development in Uganda. Government’s decision to further the
decentralization process has highlighted issues of local fiscal management,
including revenue raising capacity, downstream resource flows, and fiscal
accountability and transparency. This
has increased local dependency upon external partners.
What
happens to the money locally generated is any body’s guess. Corruption has flourished more than ever
before. It surprises to see ‘funny
characters’ taken as owners of assets you can never believe they own. This is one way many of our politicians
disguise their ill gotten wealth by having the assets in other people’s
names! The essential social services are
a night mere. For a Government to make a
lot of noise that it is offering free education, when in actual practice what
it gives per pupil per year is laughable is simply politics. The school year is 9 months and each month
shs 450 is what is given to the school per child, then a top up with shillings
100,000 per school per month. However,
most schools now have at least shs 25,000 as fees paid, shs 15,000 to 25,000 to
be able to avail lunch/porridge, the children have to buy a uniform which may
be anything in the line of about shs 10,000 or more. These children have to buy exercise books,
set examinations are the norm in all schools and parents have to foot the
bill. At the end of the day, the free or
Universal Primary Education (UPE) is much more of a political gimmick than a
reality. Actually, there is no UPE worth
talking about in Uganda
given what parents have to pay to sustain the children in Government aided
primary schools. It is sad that the cost
is high due to among other things the VAT which is abnormally high at 18%. Yet it is also true that Governments in the
past used to aid primary schools and we were able to get free books both
exercise and text and the cost of goods and services was reasonable, hence
these schools were able to meet the cost of sugar and food which is impossible
as of now if parents don’t pick the bill.
There has
been talk about poverty alleviation, but how do you expect Government policies
that are constantly impoverishing the people to miraculously create
wealth? We knew of blanket policies
which were meant to see all the people out of poverty during the Uganda
People’s Congress (UPC) Governance, by making marketing for agricultural
products a very well organized business.
Today, courtesy of the liberalization (which some in NRM have greatly
embraced and ended up as the buyers of privatized entities), every Tom and Dick
is in export business and what has this done?
The prices got for what we sell are not competitive. We need to increase foreign exchange
earnings, but which strategies are in place to see this policy a reality? In the final analysis, what we are witnessing
is a constantly depreciating shilling.
Can you imagine the prices for petrol on display the same day in Kampala city with one
petrol station showing shs 3,300 and another shs 3,650 and they are all in
business? That is the Uganda we have!
We have
through decades been led by a Government which has been involved in fighting
its own wars as well as other people’s wars.
What this has meant is a big drain on the national resources, poor pay
to highly skilled people and the country has become a net exporter of manpower
which manpower would greatly help the development process. When you go to the hospitals, it is true, a
number of structures have been rehabilitated, but the question to be asked, are
there medical personnel to help the people and if they are there, how is their
motivation? Do these infrastructures
have medicine at all? If there is
supposed to be some medicine and some medical staff divert this little to their
own ventures, who should be blamed?
We have the
mighty donors who impose policies on us.
These policies when followed religiously help the impoverished countries
to get dollars which dollars unfortunately are poorly monitored by the
donor! In the final analysis, more often
than not, much of what may have been expected from the donor money is not
realized because these donors tend to leave the supervision to the beneficiary
countries, and the outcome is the accumulation of assets by a few as we see
during the NRM era while majority enjoy abject poverty! The other aspect of the donors is imposing on
us policies which ruin our countries the more.
When NRM got to power, it badly needed the donor money to get the
economy moving. What they did among
other things was to embrace the donor policies and among these was the
privatization of nearly each and every area where Government had a role. The rationale was that Government among other
things is poor at business. Today, Uganda
is reaping out of this policy. The power
sector is simply a mess where astronomical subsidies are being made and it is
not clear whether some interests are not taking advantage. People are paying dearly for the power bills,
but it surprises that the companies responsible to see power availed to
consumers have resorted to load shedding until such a time when Government pays
up the bills for the subsidy of this power.
Government pulled out of direct involvement in agriculture business,
though much more could still be done (as it has the muscle to see capital
intensive investments a reality, as people with such capital are not easy to come-by,
which would help agro-processing industrialization, out of which Uganda can be
sure of earning foreign currency) and the sector on being left to private
players has poor performance yet it is supposed to be the main employer.
To cut the
very long story short, The World We Want shall remain in the air till such a
time when most of our leaders re-think their selfish interests and strategies
which are anti-welfare of the masses. It
is true that many of the leaders in the least developed countries would love
much more to lead poor people because they are governable. And on a sad note, I want to express my
reservations to our leaders more so President Yoweri Museveni, who among other
things will always go an extra mile to use the enactment of laws to suit his
own personal interests. Today, we see
President Museveni wanting to see demonstrators ‘castrated’ when his proposed
law where he intends not to grant bail to demonstrators among other ‘innocent
until proved guilty’ victims. These
developments are not positive to seeing stability which is critical to seeing
poverty eradication plans a success.
By
William
Kituuka Kiwanuka
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