Our own resources can help us fight poverty
I am very shocked that our present and past governments have maintained a tendency of heavy borrowing for the sake of facilitating sequentially failing ventures.
Deo Tumusiime
I am very shocked that our present and past governments have maintained a tendency of heavy borrowing for the sake of facilitating sequentially failing ventures.
Sh245b is said to have been passed by Parliament to be borrowed from the World Bank for poverty alleviation, but who said poverty can ever be alleviated? Instead the money is used to facilitate those who already have, leaving the poor in absolute poverty.
Poverty is part of normal life. In economics, poverty is not a problem because we need people with money to buy what the poor farmers produce. What is poverty eradication, and how much money does Uganda think it needs to eradicate poverty?
Our legislators must be careful about passing such unscrupulous ventures because long after they have left office, the country will be terribly indebted.
Yes, those people who give us large sums of money would have a justification to come around and claim all the investments that have accrued from their own sweat!
We should also not forget the dollar-shilling difference where, if a white gives you $135m, it would take a fortune for you to pay back. Because foreign currency has more value than local currency, we spend more money paying back, yet the shilling might even have depreciated by that time.
My advice is that we should utilise the resources around us to defeat this animal called poverty. Uganda has a lot of good soil that other countries do not have, natural water, good climate and strong manpower to turn the situation around and either reduce poverty or defeat it.
We only need the strong will of the government and those in whose hands this country rests. Ugandans need to know that some of the poverty eating into them is self-created; see how much an ordinary man spends on fuel everyday to power a generator to shave a few heads or cool a crate of soda that takes ages to be sold off.
And if media reports are anything to go by, all this is resulting from someone’s mismanagement of the energy sector. After that we go begging for so many million dollars to alleviate poverty. This is uncalled for.
Mr. President, MPs, and fellow Ugandans, let us go back to the drawing board and weigh our options. From that, we will be able to know how to fight the monster called poverty.
I am very shocked that our present and past governments have maintained a tendency of heavy borrowing for the sake of facilitating sequentially failing ventures.
Sh245b is said to have been passed by Parliament to be borrowed from the World Bank for poverty alleviation, but who said poverty can ever be alleviated? Instead the money is used to facilitate those who already have, leaving the poor in absolute poverty.
Poverty is part of normal life. In economics, poverty is not a problem because we need people with money to buy what the poor farmers produce. What is poverty eradication, and how much money does Uganda think it needs to eradicate poverty?
Our legislators must be careful about passing such unscrupulous ventures because long after they have left office, the country will be terribly indebted.
Yes, those people who give us large sums of money would have a justification to come around and claim all the investments that have accrued from their own sweat!
We should also not forget the dollar-shilling difference where, if a white gives you $135m, it would take a fortune for you to pay back. Because foreign currency has more value than local currency, we spend more money paying back, yet the shilling might even have depreciated by that time.
My advice is that we should utilise the resources around us to defeat this animal called poverty. Uganda has a lot of good soil that other countries do not have, natural water, good climate and strong manpower to turn the situation around and either reduce poverty or defeat it.
We only need the strong will of the government and those in whose hands this country rests. Ugandans need to know that some of the poverty eating into them is self-created; see how much an ordinary man spends on fuel everyday to power a generator to shave a few heads or cool a crate of soda that takes ages to be sold off.
And if media reports are anything to go by, all this is resulting from someone’s mismanagement of the energy sector. After that we go begging for so many million dollars to alleviate poverty. This is uncalled for.
Mr. President, MPs, and fellow Ugandans, let us go back to the drawing board and weigh our options. From that, we will be able to know how to fight the monster called poverty.