In a paper presented at the April 15 dialogue at Uganda Christian University, Mukono, the Uganda National Roads Authority executive director, Ms Allen Kagina, noted:
“We are paying time (sic), not performance, and that is what I think destroys public institutions.”
We all have a rough idea what that means.
There is the fat man with a fat job at the institution here. You need spies to inform you when he might be at the office.
He has a huge backlog of work, but he is paid fully. In a manner of speaking, he is half a ghost.
Young X sitting there has her nails, or his football tales, and of course the social media “work” on their smart phones. At the end of every thirty days, their salaries must be paid, or they will let hell loose.
Their immediate boss is very punctual, always planning a conference, or inventing a reason for a workshop – unless he is attending a “dialogue”, like the one where Ms Kagina was presenting her paper.
Milling around the corridors of the organisation, one or two dozen fellows with vaguely defined roles are trying to make themselves appear useful, but of course without sweating. They run small errands. They are “personal assistants”. They are part of the “front desk”. They are part of “stores”.
These, too, after 30 days …
That is a sizeable portion of the employed under President Museveni, and there are thousands in the cold who desperately want to enter that privileged sphere, to be on some payroll.
If paying for time rather than performance upsets you, our politicians are cooking something that will make you throw up. But wait a minute.
Every Ugandan government after independence has given, dangled, or promised a whole lot of free things to various entities.
In the 1960s, Dr Milton Obote’s anti-monarchist government seized virtually all the real property belonging to Uganda’s (then abolished) kingdoms. The central government got them for free. Some were turned into military barracks.
In the 1970s, Field Marshal Idi Amin gave shops and industries owned by Asians to individual Ugandans – free. Big companies and organisations went to the State, and to local entities like the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council – free.
Okay, “free” with a qualification, because I believe taxpayers and Western donors eventually compensated most of the Asians, either directly or indirectly.
Anyhow, enter President Museveni and his swashbuckling guerrillas.
After their revolutionary ideas were buried by the IMF and the World Bank, the NRM sometimes stripped and sometimes refurbished the then ubiquitous state enterprises; then it half-sold or half-donated these things to dubious “investors” and regime cronies. In effect, the beneficiaries got most of the value in these enterprises free.
Then again, all sorts of organised and individual NRM/Museveni supporters have received free “loans” and outright cash gifts over the years. Mr Museveni must be one of a very few presidents who carry sacks of money on his country tours.
If there is a controversial item that President Museveni wants Parliament to sort out, the MPs will probably get a hefty cash windfall.
Now, we had got used to failed NRM politicians being picked, one by one, and landing fat jobs with dubious roles – RDCs, presidential advisors and so on; but there is a new thing that could disgust you to the point of throwing up.
After the February general election, defeated NRM candidates have been talking of ganging up, collectively approaching Museveni and making their demands on the taxpayer.
Defeat becoming an institution! If the President wants to eradicate parasites, these pathetic hominids are the ultimate examples of a two-legged parasite.
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