Corruption is endangering lives, says Banyenzaki

By Moses Mulondo & Paul Kiwuuwa

KAMPALA - The minister for economic monitoring and research has sounded a wake-up call to the nation to intensify the fight against corruption to solve most of the country’s problems.

Among the several problems Uganda is grappling with is poverty and ill disaster preparedness.

Minister Henry Banyenzaki touched on the issue during a conference for generating ideas for disaster preparedness for the post 2015 Millennium Development Goals at Metropole Hotel on Wednesday.

He was the guest of honour.

Whereas most of the natural disasters have been linked to environmental degradation, corruption tendencies have frustrated government efforts to stop deforestation and to promote forestation, stressed Banyenzaki. 

‘Enemies’

“The president has frozen the money for the National Forestry Authority (NFA) because billions of money sent there had been stolen.

“You remember that one of the directors of NFA was found was billions of money under his bed pillow. This is very unfortunate.”

Also MP for Rubanda County West, Banyenzaki condemned the theft of billions of money in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), public service ministry and other ministries.

According to him, those implicated in these theft scandals are the enemies of Uganda’s development.

The swindling of money from the OPM inspired the withdrawal of funding from key donors, including Germany, Denmark, European Union, World Bank, among others.

The minister’s call, directed to various players committed to averting disasters, is to sensitize the ordinary citizens about the causes of the disasters.

His emphasis dwelt on the need to enhance good governance and accountability, during which he attributed many disasters in Africa to bad governance – which, he said, results into deadly and costly wars.

“If we can be able to undertake measures which will guarantee sustainable peace, it means we shall save the money we are now spending on purchasing military weapons and use it to improve the socioeconomic standards of our people,” he elaborated.

Through his recent initiatives in the international fora as chairman for parliamentary forum on International Monetary Fund and World Bank, Banyenzaki said he has influenced the international community to involve MPs in the formulation of the post 2015 Millennium Development Goals.

Disasters on the rise

The chairman for the parliamentary forum on disaster risk reduction, Alex Byarugaba, who chaired the conference, appealed to government to install the necessary early warning equipment in the meteorology department to increase the country’s ability to avert disasters.

Byarugaba further called on government to carry out a mass public campaign to sensitize the citizens on human activities which endanger the environment and make them prone to natural calamities.

The one-day consultative conference which gathered participants from government, civil society and development partners, was funded by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

“Disasters in Uganda and in the rest of the world are on the rise,” said NRC’s Tine Ramstad.

“The post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction should offer the opportunity to further scale-up disaster risk reduction efforts for all those who have forced out of their homes.”

Without divulging into details, Ramstad said NRC, which has been helping over 30,000 Internally Displaced Persons mostly in Northern Uganda, would wind up business in Uganda at the end of this year.

Among the resolutions passed by the conference include the need to enhance research on the causes of disasters in Uganda, strengthening early warning, increase public awareness on disasters and their causes.

Others include: allocating more resources for prevention and mitigation of disasters, and the need purchase modern equipment for Uganda’s meteorology department, and many more.