How can Obore defend Shs68m for MPs’ burial?

I am, of course, at pains having to contradict the reasoning of a person of Chris Obore’s (the director, communications and public affairs, Parliament of Uganda) calibre, repute and stature.
I, as a native of South Teso where Mr Obore also hails from, have always been proud, enlivened and immensely leveraged by his strong convictions about the need for political fairness, rational resource allocation, constitutionalism and quality service delivery for all. So popular and endeared was Mr Obore to the hearts of many ordinary wanainchi that, he easily earned the rare admiration and respect usually reserved for only those destined for political martyrdom.
But alas, Mr Obore appears to have metamorphosed into a completely new person now! I am particularly basing on his article in Daily Monitor of September 19, titled ‘Members of Parliament deserve decent burial’.

The overall tone of that article is that, given the elite status of an MP, his/her terms and conditions of service and because an MP is a high profile taxpayer, a budgetary allocation of Shs68 million to meet the costs of his/her burial (upon their death) is both socially and economically justifiable! Really? I am yet to be convinced.
In fact, I think from a purely human rights perspective, that line of reasoning is out rightly repugnant. While I am cognizant of the inherent Animal Farm type of inequality that typifies human existence in Uganda, it is insulting and morally inappropriate for anyone to insinuate that one human being “deserves” a super decent burial and another – by inference - does not.

By virtue of being homo sapiens, any human being deserves a decent send off from earthly life upon his/her demise - his/her social, political or economic status notwithstanding! By the way, death is the only truly equalising factor in our terrestrial lives since a dead person is a dead person – a biological statistic at that! Any effort, therefore, to extend the inequalities that our top political brass have so religiously perpetrated when still living into our graves represents the highest form of human vanity and greed. Here is why.
First, I am a believer in the principles of “contextualised” decision-making and economic rationality. When you are talking about a country such as Uganda with high income poverty levels, shambolic social services, poor physical infrastructure and a roundly shy national resource envelop, a government mabugo grant of Shs68 million for the burial of an MP is obscenely too high.

In a country where stock outs of items as cheap as hand-gloves and panadol tablets in its health facilities is the order of the day; where primary school children still study under shade trees and complete primary cycle without having mastered the most basic literacy and numeracy competencies; where a sizeable percentage of the population is food insecure; and in a society which is still heavily reliant on the primitive hand hoe technology to propel its predominantly rain-fed subsistence agrarian economy, that kind of wasteful expenditure on economically “very low-impact activities” is simply indefensible.

Uganda’s health sector budget allocation of Shs1.8 trillion (about 8 per cent of the national budget) for 2016/17 is still far below the 15 per cent Abuja benchmark. Similarly, the Shs2.7 trillion allotment to education for 2016/17 is just a drop in the ocean when viewed against the backdrop of the huge resource demand-supply gaps in that sector. So, where do we get this “excess” financial capacity to fund such lavish burials? It is not enough justification to simply say, the Shs68 million was budgeted for! Public resource allocation decision-making always ought to be sensitive and responsive to the local contextual realities.

I do agree with Mr Obore that, it is a standard practice and a socially acceptable norm for any organisation to assist with the burial of their departed members as a token of appreciation and as a gesture of solidarity with the bereaved families. But that is hardly a license for anybody to oblige all taxpayers (underpaid teachers, professors, nurses, doctors, policemen, army soldiers and the chronically poor peasants inclusive) to “heavily subsidise” the costs of burying a financially more able though now deceased MP. How will these overexploited poor souls get buried when their turn finally comes? These wretched of the earth too deserve decent burials.

[email protected]