By Joseph M. Mwagala
June 19, 2003
| Many political wannabes have taken advantage and used the issue of poverty to discredit those in power today. They have taken the public captive and continued to pound the self-fulfilling claim that Ugandans are poorer now than they were a number of years ago.
I assert here that Ugandans are not poorer today, in fact we are richer today than we were years ago. This is why: The Ugandans of today have spending habits which leave them, not necessarily poor, but with no cash in their pockets. For example, many Ugandans own items like mobile phones, which they do not need to have. The mobile phones are mainly used for gossip – how many times have heard a person in a bar call another just to ask how that person is doing, where that person is, and why that person is lost? A few years ago how many people would afford such items. Look at the statistics of the three mobile phone companies; they indicate a growing clientele and of course this means less money left for the phone owners to spend on necessities. Definitely the grandmother in the village will not get sugar from the working relative in Kampala because to the latter mobile phone airtime and service fee are the most demanding day to day needs. Look at how many bars are springing up at every corner these days – in fact even village joints sell beer these days. Where hasn’t Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola reached? These days you see their trucks criss-crossing the village roads delivering goodies. This was not the case 10 years ago. Look at the traffic jams in Kampala - these days it is no longer a pleasure to drive in Kampala. Look at the skyline of Kampala. All these show that we are spending more on unnecessary items – I mean items the majority of Ugandans can do without. I will look at the salaries of the most poorly paid cadre – the civil servants – and compare it in real terms over two points in time. The year was 1984 when former president Dr Apollo Milton Obote announced in a budget speech that the minimum wage for the lowly paid civil servant was to be Shs 6,000 from “midnight tonight”. The first salary my mother earned found me nagging her for canvas shoes which were in vogue then and she had to part with Shs 6,500 for me to purchase the shoes. This means that the lowly paid civil servant then could not afford a pair of shoes and at the same time live. Today the most lowly paid civil servant gets over Shs 100,000 per month and new good canvas shoes can be got for Shs 25,000. The “get rich quick” attitudes of Ugandans can only work when one is a thief, or in rare circumstances, lucky. This mentality has led many to despise jobs and vocations and opt for idling, gossip etc. This attitude is coupled with laziness among the population. There is a lot of arable land in Uganda and there are many countries, which do need food and other agricultural products. A person would rather work as a taxi tout – shouting (noise pollution) destinations which the travellers already know – and demand money from the taxi owner for having `given or lured’ travellers for the taxi instead of going to till the largely available land in the countryside. There is a lot of money and opportunity in Uganda – that is why foreign investors come all the way to Uganda and go to upcountry areas such as Gulu, Mbarara, Mbale etc. And they do this while Ugandans are soundly alseep. Poverty is in the minds of those who want it near them and are willing to listen to self-seeking politicians drumming up the allegation of widespread poverty. Eventually they actually begin to believe that the poverty stricken. We Ugandans should wake up and have it in our minds that unless we make a contribution to the economy, through participating in production, then we should not expect to partake in the fruits of the freedom we are experiencing now. We should also change our spending habits and learn to save for future investment. |
© 2003 The Monitor Publications
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