Government shouldn’t play Russian Roulette with Ugandans stuck abroad

A young man known to me, had tried everything entrepreneurship and employment, till he figured that he couldn’t force opportunity out of where it didn’t exist for some.

Drenched with the kind of never-say-die attitude that you are likely to find in thousands of young Ugandans, he decided that he would try winning away, if he couldn’t win at home. So in February, with a visa of just three months, he migrated from Uganda to the Middle East, searching for greener pastures.

The job search was promising, until it wasn’t. Covid-19. Lockdown. With his visa on the verge of expiring, I recently reached out to him. I asked about his options, but also asked about accommodation and feeding plans, and what happens if he were to need medical attention right now.

He is a classic case of thousands of Ugandans, young people, who couldn’t find opportunities here and decided to risk it all, going for broke in foreign countries. Many, like him, are now stuck. Others, students who sought an education that would give them a competitive edge, are also stuck in foreign capitals, running out of money and supplies.

What is government’s obligation to them? As citizens, as tax payers, as sources of foreign currency in remittances who support this economy? Will government meet that obligation and ensure their safety and welfare till the situation normalises? Would those that are due for returns home be evacuated? What would it take to get them back home?

In the past, government – rightly – argued that evacuating students stuck in Wuhan, China, would be a health risk. Somehow, the coronavirus still found its way here without their help; and we now have evidence of ability to deal with it – so there should be no excuse now.

Except government has little record of showing up for its people when it needs to. Its handling of the issues of Ugandans working under inhumane conditions in the Middle East and North Africa is deplorable. But it is not without systemic precedent, which makes it hard to see how or if at all, there will be a solution even now.

There just seems to be a tendency here, to do one thing so well and then equalise it with a botched something elsewhere. It’s like standing on a seesaw and not knowing whether you will go up or down – except here, there are lives involved. If you are not Ugandan, this might be a tad confusing but I will illustrate.

Look at our apparent success in curtailing the spread of the coronavirus and how it seems to be counterbalanced with the lackadaisical food distribution, the chaos around emergency care transport: the drop in crime and rise in LDU-facilitated deaths.

You wouldn’t tell that there is a lockdown by simply looking at the numbers on our roads and in town. It seems that people have decided – against the directives – to lift the lock down; and that herd immunity is how to deal with the virus.

You see it in how we run a curative health strategy, while also paying health workers miserly salaries and never really equipping hospitals. You see it in government officials turning up on political talk shows to tout the progress of our healthcare sector and then flying out to India, Europe and the US for treatment the next week.

It is exactly why people are still able to find shortcuts around car stickers and drive around unimpeded. Why politicians are still able to distribute food in direct contravention of a presidential directive.

You see it in the intention to distribute learning content to millions of students who are currently unable to attend school, totally missing the minor detail on how the said content will be used, since it is academic/curriculum-based and parents aren’t qualified to teach it; or the fact that our schools don’t train children to learn on their own.

You will also find it in how, for a while now, the realities of work have been far divorced from the rigours put into education, but for some reason we have stuck to our methods. In how a combination of doing not getting things right has meant that millions have no opportunities to thrive because there are no systems to make sure of that.

And because government got us here, when it abdicated its duty to create opportunities for decent work and quality education, it has the responsibility to care and act in the interests of the citizens of Uganda.

Mr Rukwengye is the founder, Boundless Minds.