Was The Presidential Donation To The Covid-19 Task Force A Political Move?

Was the presidential donation to the fight against Covid 19 necessary? Was it a political move or a generous one? We look into the matter with a deep discussion.

Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, president of Uganda

Over the past few days social media has been flooded when the president offered 50%  of his presidential salary to the task force to support the fight against corona virus which was delivered by the first lady Janet Kataha Museveni to the Red Cross. The president earns 3.5 million Ugx and he offered 1.4 million Ugx to the Red Cross.

This has drawn many people’s attention and brought up many discussions and views on the donation. But before going any further, we thank the president for his generosity and kindness. Because during these tough times, everyone’s effort and support is need to go through this period together as a nation. We also thank the private companies and individuals that have answered the president’s call and offered material and financial support to the cause.

However, some analysts have gone further to dig into the president’s donation and have had several discussions of divergent views particularly on the donation. We are in a period where everyone is struggling to make sure they are heard contributing something to the task force which creates a nice public image. But from the public there is an outcry of the food being poor quality and delays in delivering it.

In an engaging interview with a concerned citizen, Social Justice and Healthy Equity Activist and same time a medical doctor, here is what he thinks about the topic. Muna U reports!

“My name is Doctor Mirembe Joel Nsubuga, a concerned citizen and a leader in the doctor’s fraternity as secretary Kampala branch and the same time a politician aspiring for Member of Parliament Mawokota south. My comment on the president’s donation of 1.4 million Ugx is as follows. First of all from the start of the covid-19 pandemic, it was asserted by all Ugandans irrespective of their political differences, religious affiliations, poverty or economic lines that we should join hands and fight this. Everyone must give out something depending on their capacity at this time. The president as well came out clearly and asked every Ugandan to contribute and he has been reading out every donation from the poor, rich, middle class organisations and all other stakeholders of the society including foreign donations which have come in, in terms of medical support and personal protective equipment (PPE).”

He continues, “As a leader, the president should have come out first but he kept waiting, I don’t know why. At a certain point I thought he is waiting to judge and give the best as the saying goes “He who laughs last, laughs best” and the same way we expected the president to laugh the best. To put it on record the president is a very rich man with hundreds and hundreds of cattle, investments everywhere and to add on he runs a very big statehouse budget and from that budget, there are donations he can freely,constitutionally and legally give out. For example he gave Bebe Cool, Catherine Kusaasira, DJ Michael, Full figure huge sums of money and they are driving very expensive cars for just a mere expression of support to the NRM without doing any technical work for the party according me as a Ugandan.”

He added on, “But the same president who donated tax payer’s money worth of billions to people who have not impacted our sectors has come out to tell us how he earns 3.5 million Ugx that is mockery to me because the president runs a budget which is in billions every month. He donates millions and millions to every function he attends let it be a religious function. Right now the president is donating 1.4 million, Shame upon him. Recently the telecom companies allowed Ugandans to send money for free and he said it’s not important yet it’s very essential to me the common person, the struggling unemployed youth looking for food during these tough times".

He asserted that “the president instead asked for four wheel cars to be donated of which Covid-19 is not a car thing, it’s a medical workers’ and PPE thing, it’s putting risk allowances for medical workers and recruiting as many medical workers as possible. It’s also making sure Ugandans avoid the disease by prevention through media. I am disappointed with the president! He can do better than that. We have heard of a classified budget of 400 billion Ugx of tax payers’ money that was passed by parliament which is unnecessary during this period. This is a time where we don’t need classified budgets and we also need to know what we are spending on clearly daily".

He said that, “the Governments priorities are worrying me as a concerned citizen. My message is clear I am disappointed with the president. He donated billions of Ugandan shillings to musicians and he comes to donated 1.4 million Ugx to 44 million Ugandans.” In his thinking he suggests that the president should cut salaries of government workers where some earn over 50 million Ugx as monthly salary which excludes cars and several allowances. He also says the president has no moral authority to condemn MPs over the 10 billion yet he personally took 400 billion which is immoral also".

To the members of parliament, he sent a message and said “they should not cry that they are being caught red handed with just the 10 billion because they have a duty to oversee the money being appropriated and passed. They kept quiet and money was wrongly appropriated to other people and we also kept quiet because we had no chance and we waited for them. So we are punishing them for two reasons, one being idle, reckless and being non patriotic and allowed the executive to take slot of money which would have been used to aid the task force, which would have enabled village children to access study materials provided by the ministry of education".

“The chairpersons in villages are not empowered to carry on their duties during the pandemic. Their motorcycles don’t have fuel to reach the communities and others don’t even have a bicycle. But the top government officials who are actually doing nothing during the pandemic are allocating themselves huge sums of money” he concluded.

As Muna U we want to appreciate the president for the timely measures that were put forward like encouraging social distancing, the lockdown and other measures put in place to fight the disease and everyone who has put in efforts to fight this together with the ministry of health.