Why are pensioners treated like trash?

Oct 24, 2005

<b>Letters of the day</b><br><br>SIR — The government has accumulated a debt burden of sh300b in unpaid pensioners’ arrears. Yet the same government usually claims that the economy is growing and there is better governance by NRM. This is a shame and terrible mistake.

Letters of the day

SIR — The government has accumulated a debt burden of sh300b in unpaid pensioners’ arrears. Yet the same government usually claims that the economy is growing and there is better governance by NRM. This is a shame and terrible mistake.

Senior citizens who toiled so much for their country should not be ignored in such a manner. The government cannot pay its debts to pensioners and yet there was a press release on August 6 that sh100.6m had been released for the payment of gratuities and arrears. Who has received this money? Many pensioners have died without receiving their entitlements.

It is amazing that during the administration of Idi Amin and Milton Obote, pensioners were never deprived of their entitlements. Is it good governance to ignore senior citizens in such a manner? The minister in charge of pensions, should consider this urgently.
Phillips Ayo
Apac

SIR — Recently members of the current parliament voted unanimously to be pensionable in addition to their salaries of about sh5m and constituency allowances.

This is a good example of opportunism, selfishness and exploitation. It is an indication that the MPs went to parliament to satisfy only their personal interests instead of taking care of the concerns of their electorate whom they claim to represent.

This is one of the ways poverty has been aggravated in Uganda. Those who have get much more and those who do not have lose even the little they have.

I thank Radio Uganda and Uganda Television for covering parliamentary sessions. Because of this, we have been able to tell who said what.

The voters believed that the MPs would do everything possible to fight poverty that has ravaged the population of this nation, to improve conditions of living of teachers and students in order to raise the education standards of this country that had deteriorated greatly and to fight corruption which has destroyed the good name of Uganda as the Pearl of Africa.

For example, people expected the MPs to put in place a law which would prevent health workers in government hospitals or health centres not to run private private clinics. This would prevent conflict of interest.

Name withheld

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