Uganda's civil service: The battle for the heart and soul of the Movement

Aug 22, 2016

This single company in the agriculture and value addition sector, generated $37.6b in sales revenue in 2014 alone, $10b higher than our total GDP.

By Odrek Rwabwogo

The US food company, Tysons, processes and sells 41 million chickens, 133,000 cattle and 383,000 pigs every week.

This single company in the agriculture and value addition sector, generated $37.6b in sales revenue in 2014 alone, $10b higher than our total GDP.

Tysons would not be able to penetrate new markets or improve its production efficiencies without enforcing food and product standards traceability system. This is recorded and shared information in the entire life cycle of a product from the producer and consumer in order for the latter to gain confidence that what is on their plates is safe, protected and healthy.

Traceability systems help farmers to get premium prices for agricultural commodities. The largest exporters of beef to the world — Australia, Uruguay, Brazil, Canada, Argentina and the US have legislation requiring traceability systems and their enforcement in their domestic markets, a non-tariff barrier to many developing countries attempting to gain access for their agricultural produce.

We mention traceability because it relies entirely on a codified set of rules and its enforcement depends on the committed public service. An enforcement regime only functions where there is a high level of trust of the civil service and where the latter's moral and ethical legitimacy is not under assail on grounds of partiality and/or selective application of the rules in favour of the few against the majority. And in here, lies a battle raging for the heart and soul of the Movement.

It is about whether the organisation founded and supported by the common person, will serve the interests of a minority elite that now fills the public service together with their accomplices in the private sector or if it will find its full measure of footing with the common man, who gave his life and property to build its foundations.

If the Movement hopes to take the country to a middle-income status, it will require a civil service sensitive to the needs of the population and able to support pro-people policies. We cannot, for example, entirely blame the common person for the alleged adulteration of acaricides or poor usage of anti-tick chemicals.

The common person doesn't know much about the outside world. The Movement thrived on education in its early days; education that changed a man from inside out. Now, this is no more. It is the leadership that sets the tone.

It is the civil service and the political class that should provide awareness and create a successful traceability programme to increase the productivity of the farmers.

There are two expressions of the battle raging for the soul of the Movement. The key question is whom will the Movement serve? Competitive marathon runners know well that the start off of a race has a crowd.

However, the end has a few sweating individuals that make it to the finish. They are committed to finishing the race intact. How will the Movement finish its race?

As an elite organisation that lifted a few or a pro-people organisation that raised the lot and status of the majority of our people? In public affairs, perception is very much shaped by the attitudes and behaviour of the leaders and what people see not quite what the leaders say.

The first battlefront to check out our commitment to shelter the common person from the vagaries of economic changes is in the current consumer prices; right down to your breakfast table, if you are able to have one.

Uganda's cost of living, especially for the salary earners, small-scale business owners and young people with small start-ups, is high and a large disincentive to saving and investment.

A comparison of key costs for a number of daily shopping items between Uganda and Kenya will surprise you. I always knew we are low cost country in terms of food. No, we are a high cost country.

This largely is caused by the quality and nature of interventions (or the lack of) made in constructing an inclusive economy by the civil service, who our elected leaders regularly hand the reins of power to but who, apparently, care less because they largely live comfortable lives unlike a majority of our people.

Let us get some examples to illustrate this. The cost of a phone call (per minute within a network) in Kenya is sh70, while Uganda is sh180. An SMS in Kenya is sh17 yet in Uganda, it costs sh100. There is no justification for this high call cost other than perhaps a high tax telecoms pass on to consumers or may be Ugandans are paying higher for poor networks on account of limited investment into equipment and technology because of capital repatriations made weekly by phone companies; a matter the civil servants too can deal with, if they choose to.

A litre of processed long shelf life milk in Uganda is sh5,100, while in Kenya it is sh2,838, 400gms white bread in Uganda costs sh3,500 while in Kenya, it is sh1,400; breakfast cereals in Uganda cost sh27,000 (for 700g) while in Kenya, this is sh9,000.

To buy two kilogrammes of wheat in Uganda for your ‘rolex' will cost you sh6,000, while in Kenya, it is sh3,630; a 10-roll pack of toilet paper in Uganda is sh10,000-sh12,000 depending on quality, while in Kenya it is only sh2,000.

Even sugar produced in Uganda and transported across the border to Kenya supermarkets, costs at least sh600 less than what we buy at sh4,000 in our home country.

If you want to build a house, a retail bag of cement is sh36,000, while in Kenya, it is sh18,000. I can go on into other products and services such as fuel, lubricants, hotel room costs, car hire etc. Suffice to say living in Uganda isn't cheap for a low-income earner.

 

Why are consumer prices high in Uganda?

Ugandan planners in the search for the last ounce of revenue have chosen not to cushion the common low-income earner from intermediate raw material taxes such as import and excise duty and VAT.

On milk alone, packaging materials attracts 25% excise duty, while the final product has 18% VAT. Cereals and cereal boxes, sugar, wheat etc all attract tax. In fact wheat has 60% import duty, 6% withholding tax and 1.5% infrastructure levy. Kenya, instead as a fast urbanising cosmopolitan nation, exercises a little more sensitivity to the needs of her urban, especially the salaried poor.

In Uganda, if the urban people were not regularly subsidising their food bill with farm produce that is shipped daily on overloaded government pick-up trucks along with protruding sacks of charcoal by many officials, it is not out of proportion to argue that we would have trouble feeding the low-income earners in towns. Instead the planners selfishly tend to give more benefits to the high-level calibre of civil servants and politicians.

Out of over 148 ministries, departments and agencies, over 50% of their leaders earn above sh12m a month and some up to sh45m. This is without the travel allowances and per diem and out of station including workshop as well as seminar attendance fees.

If one adds extra-undeclared income that comes to some who use their positions to gain a foothold in procurement deals in their ministries, you understand why we have a wealthy club of some civil servants and politicians, but who cannot easily explain how they gained their wealth. Since their money, especially from procurement deals, comes at no cost to them, they plough it in the real estate sector, an easier way to hide it and this gets the sector prices sagging.

This is partly the reason some teachers, doctors, engineers and other professionals, leave the country or prefer a political career.

For many young people, politics offers hope of a better salary and some fringe benefits. Therefore, it goes without saying that if you do not struggle to buy bread, milk and engaano (wheat), you will be shielded from knowing the effect of intermediate raw material taxes on other people's lives. That is the status of most of our well to do civil servants and politicians.

The second form of expression of the Movement taking the road for the few and caring less about the majority that return the party religiously, is how the civil servants negotiate contracts and loans that leave our youth with no skilling or jobs. As an example, Ronald (real name) grew up in Entebbe around the golf course and taught himself early how to make green courses for golfers, plant and manicure street roundabouts and compounds of the rich.

In mid-2014, he participated in a tender to plant grass and flowers on edges and crossings on the new Entebbe expressway. His bid was thrown out of the contest along with a number of other Ugandan firms, in favour of a Chinese firm. "You mean in my country, I cannot even plant grass", he came crying to me for help.

If I have no capital to supply cement and steel and now I cannot even plant grass and these jobs are also taken by the Chinese, what am I for in my country?"

China, in 2015 alone, produced 805 million tonnes of crude steel and was able to consume only 664 million tonnes. China has an overall excess steel capacity of 425 million tonnes.

China's one tonne of cold steel sells for around $295, while the America's sells for $504. To progressively cut their steel production in the next five years by their government's declared position, of up to 150 million tonnes, China must offload this cheap steel on countries that it gives loans, especially countries whose civil servants have either poor negotiation capabilities or are selfish participants in offloading foreign economic problems to their nations as long as they, as individuals, have a personal gain.

They do not do this with countries that have ability to negotiate better terms or use their power to take a stand. For example, when America lost 13,500 jobs in 2015, in steel plants due to Chinese cheap steel imports, the country slapped in March 2016, a 265.9% preliminary levy on all imports from China.

 

If China does not offload their ‘toxic cargo', they are at a risk of losing up to 500,000 jobs in the iron and steel sector on top of the $10b they already lost in 2014's excess production. Because of this, Ronald and hundreds of thousands of Ugandan youth, entrepreneurs along with local steel firms, will have no job/sales and are expected to go under.

Shouldn't a reasonably enlightened civil service that negotiates these deals consider the fact that it does not matter whether a loan has been given to a country but that they must secure terms that create jobs rather than take away even the little capabilities that are emerging?  When we take loans, we borrow from our youth; they are the ones who will pay these debts long when the current borrowers negotiating deals are gone. Should we not do the best we can as negotiators to ensure that these loans leave them an inheritance in jobs, skilling and industry?

To rein in this kind of behaviour and return the Movement to its founders — common the people, we would like to propose changes in the recruitment, supervision and dismissal of the civil servants who do wrong when they have been entrusted with people's destiny.

First, we must insist on quarterly performance reports based on pre-agreed targets. There should be consequences for missed targets.

There need to be a review of the 10 layers anyone dismissing civil servant has to go through. Currently to handle an errant civil servant and avoid litigation, one has to warn or reprimand then suspend while the civil servant gets all their benefits.

Then one can withhold or differ increment or stoppage of increment or surcharge or refund, then interdiction with half pay, then reduction in rank and finally, if possible dismissal happens. This can take up to five years or more. These multi-layer steps were initially meant to protect civil servants from unfair dismissals or political interference; but these days, the rules seem archaic and are abused by the very people they were meant to protect. Should we not, as a country, review these rules in light of the fact that our public sector should match private sector standards, if we have to compete in the world?

Finally, Ugandans, as shareholders in these ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) must demand more from the boards the ministers appoint to supervise the agencies. Prospective Board members for any institution of government should be interviewed or carefully selected based on ability, competence and experience and less on where they come from or what their religion is. A ministry such as ICT, for example, should not have a board with no one among the members less than 30 years of age qualifies in new technologies, yet we are trying to build a new economy based on technology and innovation, key areas that young people are engaged in.

Next week, we will take on the cancer of corruption and how to stem its negative tide.

The writer a farmer and an entrepreneur

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