You don’t have to be envious over official burials lately being accorded to departing state officials, but one thing emerging is that they’re turning into pomp, vanity, and extravagance at the taxpayers’ expense.

With hospitals and private funeral homes installing modern refrigeration systems so that copses can be kept fresh, while funeral details including an “official mourner” are agreed upon, the expenses are going through the roof because family members, supporters, and the political government seek to extract as many all-round benefits as they possibly can.

The Secretary to the Treasury, Ramadhan Ggoobi with his previous sword of truth on “building the economy that works” must be shaking his head, if not about his inability to fend off insistent demands, perhaps in amazement at how politics can make economic decision-making stupid.

His lofty promise to cut waste and focus on economic growth priorities could turn into a mirage, and may soon find himself unable to defend his economic battle flag, and then choose to play along.

From former Speaker Jacob Oulanyah, Papa Augustine Osuban-the Emorimor of Teso, Central Bank Governor Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile, Gen. Elly Tumwine, DP Supremo Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere, PS Keith Muhakanizi, and now state minister Col. [rtd] Charles Okello Engola Mac’Odwogo, it’s inconceivable that all this is done by Uganda under a serious economic squeeze, and the government has officially called for frugality in public spending.

You probably don’t even have to know the full details of the budget but the outward display of opulence is so unmistakable that colossal sums of public money are being wasted.

On conservative estimates, the government now spends at least five hundred million per official burial, but the real figures are treated as national secrets with multiple agencies spending on the same funeral yet don’t collate.

Usually, the funeral period will stretch for over a week while government caters to the management of the dead body, feeding mourners in at least two venues, transportation to multiple places so that the deceased can be accorded the appropriate accolades and then buried in a marble tiled grave.

Often separate religious and parliament sittings are convened for the single purpose of paying tribute yet these could be done at one place, either before or after burial.

Sometimes, private home upgrades are done at public expense where the deceased began a vanity project but death cut them short before they could complete in their rural place of origin or settlement, where perhaps nobody will ever bother to return to.

Details in Saturday Vision