Who is failing Museveni on investment?

By Monday Akol Amazima

As and when Uganda was celebration the international Labour Day, the fountain of honour President Yoweri Museveni, while addressing the nation at St Paul SS Mutolere in Kisoro district with humour, castigated the unbecoming behaviour of some bureaucrats in ministries who invest much of their time swinging themselves in modern office chairs with their legs up high on the table as they toss around investors or pay little attention to them.

To some, it could easily pass as another humorous gesture of the President to spice his Labour Day message to a crowd that had waited for long for his speech.

Much as Uganda is chanced to have a workaholic president, the fact remains he cannot be everywhere like oxygen. Therefore there is need for the wananchi to raise their patriotic credentials and help in monitoring government programmes and personnel so that we can realise the most needed bonna bagagawale.

From May 10- 14 this year, I was privileged to participate in a media trip to Istanbul and Ankara in Turkey that was sponsored by the Turkish government.

While in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, the Ambassador of Uganda to Turkey, Johnson Olwa siad that the government of Turkey had sent about 10 memorandums of understanding (MOUs) to foster cooperation and development between the two countries. But four years to date, Uganda had neither worked on the MOUs nor responded.

Turkey as a country is said to have set aside more than $300m to invest in Uganda. Just because our officials in our ministries are delaying to interpret the MOUs from Turkey am afraid may cost us this opportunity.

Uganda’s intra and inter-government departments sharing of information and response is very low. As President Museveni has put it, senior civil servant should stop acting as gods to be worshipped but rather work hard and faster to bring the much needed fundamental change in their various departments.

It is upon this background that would propose that the civil service act and policy should be changed so that accounting officers right from sub count to the highest offices are hired and fired on contract basis that are renewable depending on one’s performance. This kind of tendency that civil servants are untouchable is causing more harm than good.

Our Ugandan streets are always awash with information of how some unscrupulous Ugandans have made a fortune by extorting money from potential investors. This kind of behaviour has led to some investors running away from the country or doing some shoddy job as and when given contracts.

Finally, the good message we came with from Turkey is that the Turkish government is more than ready to invest and cooperate with Uganda in areas of education, health, agriculture, and tourism infrastructure development.

The earlier we looked for the MOUs and worked on them the better for us as it would not only create employment for Ugandans but also improve on delivery of services in some areas.

The writer is a teacher, journalist, Pan African and works with UBC