Inside Kiira plans to lure MPs to its BUBU cars

Kiira, the local company reputed for designing and assembling vehicle ‘mannequins,’ has offered value additions in their production line to lure Parliament into awarding them a contract to produce cars for legislators.

According to the tiny worms that run rounds in this writer’s head every Sunday, Kiira has been eying the tender to produce cars for the 11th Parliament to reduce the cost in handing out cash to individual MPs to buy their own.

Each of the 529 MPs is expected to receive about Shs320m for a car but the Finance ministry, according to the worms, wants to draft in Kiira to produce a more affordable alternative for the MPs.

However, the idea of awarding such a tender to Kiira has not gone down well with several legislators. Some intimated to the worms in this writer’s head that the “things which that company makes are nothing but vehicle mannequins with nice colour.”

A mannequin is a life-size dummy used to display clothes. They are especially known to make the ugliest of clothes look so dapper that impulse buyers wouldn’t resist. Like the Kiira stuff, except that no one has been known to buy the vehicle mannequins since they started day-dreaming in 2007.

Among the attractive packages dangled to Parliament is that the cars will be equipped with flashlights and sirens. In a country with one of the worst traffic congestions in the world, the sirens will come in handy in forcing every other taxpayer off road for the big men in Parliament. Unlike the usual sirens, the Kiira invention will be in a class of its own, according to sources privy to the proposals.

“One blast of the siren and all other vehicles will be lifted off the road and hang in space until the MP’s Kiira EV Smack has sped past,” an explanatory note in the proposal reads, adding that the sirens and flashlights use magnetic putty and operate with currents in space to lift ordinary vehicles off the roads and hold them up until the object that activated the system has gone out of range.

The range, according to US Space Scientists, is about 1km -- meaning all vehicles within a kilometre radius of an MP’s Kiira marvel would go hanging in the air at the blast of a siren.

The idea is to reassure the MPs who are nursing misgivings that with such state-of-the-dream vehicles, they wouldn’t even need lead cars and it would save time to allow MPs visit their side dishes and return home to their spouses without raising any eyebrows.

On concerns that the vehicular mannequins will break down every after a gear shift, Kiira said their current assembly comes with invisible breakdown service to tow the MPs whenever that happens.

Sources say officials at automobile company are hopeful that pulling the dream-like production and distribution of vehicular mannequins to MPs would reassure the President who has been losing patience and interest in Kiira.

The officials were pleased to learn that an outgoing MP has cancelled plans for a party he was throwing to celebrate his loss in the January parliamentary elections after reading the concept note furnished with Parliament.

The MP from northern Uganda, best known for his maverick antics, had earlier invited a select group of legislators to the party, saying if he had won he would be resigning already as he “cannot stand the idea of using a stuttering mannequin on the road.”

Those invited are legislators and individuals he said had “worked hard to see to my defeat,” adding that the idea of driving Kiira EV makes him feel like the real victor.

“The fact that an MP who has created a niche for himself as that honourable who cries on camera and threatens to quit his own party many times before he does and loses an election has smelt the coffee means Kiira is soon winning public confidence in its production line,” the company said.