Doctors and Teachers have a right to be corrupt
By Bernard Ddumba
25th July 2011: Last week, thanks to the media, we learnt that President Yoweri Museveni’s mighty State House [alone] has come up with a mind-blowing 150billion shilling budget to be shouldered by the starving Ugandan tax payer.
General Museveni apparently burns 40million shillings every day he sets foot outside his palace. He also blows 6billion shillings worth of our money on “heroes” medals. Another 6billion is, would you believe it, “unclassified”! In other words, to lay men like you and I, that is his pocket money. He is at total liberty to blow it as he wishes. It’s none of our business as tax payers to ask how he spends our money.
Our honourable Members of Parliament on the other hand line their corrupt pockets with close to 30million shillings of our money every month. Their wives, husbands, and children are also entitled to the same healthcare insurance they get as MPs. This enables the entire family to get the best medical attention money can buy when we the tax payers die needlessly in the smelly hospitals across the country.
General Museveni’s “Golden Girl” Allen Kagina, plus all her Executives who are charged with the “impossible task” of collecting our taxes at Uganda Revenue Authority, also walk off laughing all the way to their banks with tens of millions [each] of our money every month. Those examples are literally the tip of the proverbial iceberg; because we haven’t even scratched the surface of financial obscenity and inequality in our country.
As all these undeserving Executives, MPs, and VIPs immorally allocate themselves billions upon billions of our hard-earned money, we also learnt last week that many of Museveni’s Universal Secondary Schools [USE] might close because, as you rightly guessed, they don’t have money to remain open any longer.
What this very sad state of affairs means in real terms is that hundreds of thousands of children born to the long suffering Ugandan taxpayers who were in Museveni’s USE schools will now join their parents in a life of hereditary illiteracy and the attendant poverty that comes with it.
And it’s not just poor taxpayers’ children facing tough times. Their Teachers are also paid a miserable 250,000/= per month; hardly enough to pay a month’s rent for even a one bedroom house, let alone pay school fees or buy food to feed their children. Surely, how can that be right in modern day Uganda?
For years, these honourable men and women who taught us everything we know today have been demanding a humble pay rise. Unfortunately, the mighty General Museveni has rejected their legitimate demands every time; arguing that there is no money. How come there is money for State House budget to increase every year? In fact, sometimes it’s increased twice a year with supplementary budgets!
Now our Teachers are [quite rightly in my view] threatening to go on strike until their demands are met. Our Doctors, the people who treat us when we are sick, are also paid peanuts per month. They too are now threatening to go on strike. Again, I support them wholeheartedly in their quest for a living wage.
In fact, I would go a step further and even tell our doctors and teachers that considering the gross injustice they are suffering at the hands of Museveni’s government, they have both a legitimate and moral right to be corrupt.
After all, that is the only way they can feed their children in the current economic environment where a single kilo of sugar now costs 6,000/=. END. Please login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.
