Inside Amuriat, Biriggwa promises to Ugandans

By Damali Mukhaye

As the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) candidates competing to carry the party flag in the 2021 presidential elections head out to convince delegates, they have each listed their plans for Uganda should they succeed in unseating President Museveni.

FDC party president Patrick Amuriat Oboi and the party’s national chairperson, Mr Wasswa Biriggwa, were nominated by the party’s electoral commission to compete for the presidential flag.
The two are slated to start convincing delegates during the sub-region delegates’ meetings which kick off tomorrow (Monday), starting with Buganda.

Biriggwa promises
Mr Biriggwa has pledged to bail out households hit by the Covdi-19 pandemic with cash relief of Shs100,000 monthly for the first six months.

“Many people have been left helpless and no one is helping them. My first task is going to be how to help each household get out of poverty and the situation Covid-19 has left them in. They will use the Shs100,000 we shall distribute to them to start small businesses and buy small necessities for their families,” Mr Biriggwa says.

Mr Biriggwa also promises to revamp the healthcare systems, which he says are broken down. He says people are being charged exorbitant fees to access services in public hospitals while others buy medicine at high costs in government hospitals.

According to Mr Biriggwa, he will provide free medical services to all Ugandans. He also says he will increase the number of medical workers who will visit people at their homes to detect and treat people in order to reduce congestion in hospitals.

E-Learning
Mr Biriggwa also promises to buy each learner a tablet to promote e-Learning. He says government has just realised the importance of e-Learning after the pandemic, something it could have promoted much earlier.

“Rwanda has succeeded in buying their learners tablets and our neighbours in Kenya are also doing the same. But Uganda is just watching. We should move to educate our village people to use technology, but how are we going to do this when they have never seen a computer?” Mr Biriggwa says.

Mr Biriggwa also promises to modernise and promote agriculture by introducing the every village, one product model. He says with this system each district will be required to produce what it can produce best to increase production and sustainability.

Biriggwa says Uganda is still 20 years behind in as far as technology is concerned. He says since he was the first person to introduce mobile phones in Uganda and East Africa, there is no doubt that technology in this country will further be promoted.

He also pledges to promote pan-Africanism through encouraging harmony between Uganda and its neighbours.

“At a moment, our neighbours think about themselves because they have waited for democracy to happen in Uganda but all in vain. Take a look at Tanzania, how many times have they changed their presidents when Uganda is still having the same president?” Mr Biriggwa asks.

“Of course I cannot speak about pan-Africanism and forget the peace of this country we are enjoying. But if the current situation continues, we shall go back to the suffering we went through.”

Mr Biriggwa also promises to give tax exemptions to local traders at the expense of the foreign investors, whom he says are only repatriating money to their countries.

“It is a crime for our traders to be paying so much taxes while the foreigners come here and are exempted from the taxes. This must change. We need to care about our local investors, businesses and industries. If you charge local investors expensively, they will not hire many people,” Mr Biriggwa says.

He also promises to decongest Kampala by moving all government agencies out of the city.
On youth unemployment, Mr Biriggwa says he will give the youth incentives so they can go back to the villages and utilise the land that has been left idle.

“People have abandoned villages and have shifted to the city, hence coming up with incentives to draw them back to the villages will increase production,” Mr Biriggwa says.

He also pledges to fight corruption among the government workers, asserting that he will not only fight the ‘small fish’ like it is being witnessed currently, but also go for the ‘big fish’.

Amuriat pledges
Party president Amuriat, on the other hand, says he is going to put more emphasis on health and education for all Ugandans at no cost.

Mr Amuriat says he does not support the current curriculum, which he says is teaching students irrelevant courses that are not of the 21st Century.

He says he plans to change the curriculum and promote use of technology in education, adding that he will distribute laptops to all learners so that they can develop interest in use of technology.

“Students should study beyond their environment. We shall put the learning materials on those laptops that will be distributed to all learners so that they grow up with a glimpse of technology. We shall ensure that they do not consume what they are not supposed to do from the laptops at their age by putting only learning materials on the laptops,” Mr Amuriat says.

On health, Mr Amuriat says he will emphasise preventive measures than curative ones. He says this will be done at the household level where people will be empowered to prevent diseases such as malaria, dysentery and diarrhoea, among others, to reduce the number of people going to hospitals.

“With the above approach, we shall save the resources to handle chronical diseases that cannot be prevented such as cancer, accidents among others. This means we shall have few medical workers in the hospitals to handle chronical diseases and they will be well remunerated,” Mr Amuriat promises.

He also promises to empower Ugandans through promoting activities that will generate income. He says he will do this through revamping the agriculture sector, which he says is underfunded.

Mr Amuriat pledges to put more emphasis on adding value to agricultural products and sustainable production.

He promises to encourage agricultural cooperatives that will promote access to capital and cheap high-quality seeds.
Amuriat also promises to transform the country’s economy from a peasant to a high-tech economy that will involve production of high value products such as phones and electronics, as opposed to importing them.

The two candidates will be subjected to a vote by 1,200 delegates and the candidate with the highest votes will carry the party flag in 2021 elections.