UPDF top brass meets soldiers

The leadership of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) has kicked off a massive campaign to sensitise junior members amid voices of disgruntlement over welfare.

Army commanders, including Deputy Chief of Defence Forces Lt Gen Peter Elwelu, met officers at different military facilities at the weekend urging them to have discipline, be patient as their welfare gaps are being addressed and ensure that they comply with civilian authority as established under the Constitution.

“Lt Gen Elwelu cautioned the UPDF fraternity against living a flamboyant lifestyle which causes stress through multiple borrowing of money and advised them to always live within their means,” a UPDF statement read in part.

While Lt Gen Elwelu told the soldiers to avoid “love for soft life and being taken up by money and material things”, saying countries with armies that are money oriented and materialistic have always collapsed”.

“He advised them that it is necessary to live “a down-to-earth lifestyle” while remaining in the correct line and the rest will follow and there is time for everything [as it is said in] Ecclesiastes Chapter 3,” the UPDF statement added.

While addressing soldiers at the Armoured Brigade headquarters in Masaka, Brig Gen Patrick Mwesigye, the Commissioner for Patriotism in the Office of the President, said in five to 10 years their lives would positively change as the country will have enough financial muscle.

Brig Mwesigye said soldiers’ welfare is paramount and “reiterated the need to build a country where everyone is happy.”

The Chief Political Commissar, Maj Gen Henry Masiko, while talking to soldiers at the army headquarters in Mbuya, said the army leadership is ensuring that all the ongoing projects aimed at addressing the welfare gaps are accomplished.

Brig Gen Hassan Kimbowa, the Adjutant of the Ministry of Defence and Veteran Affairs, echoed the same call telling soldiers that UPDF strategic leadership is working on increasing their salaries.

He said they would improve challenges in the UPDF health facilities, Wazalendo SACCO, Defence Forces Shop and establish schools for soldiers in foreign missions.

The army meetings come nearly a month after Pte Wilson Sabiiti shot and killed the former State minister of Labour, Col Charles Okello Engola, who he was working for as a bodyguard.

Pte Sabiiti, who claimed to have struggling with financial challenges, committed suicide thereafter.

Several soldiers, who were previously deployed to Somalia, have also been publishing messages on social media claiming that they were not paid allowances after completing the mission. Some have been prosecuted in the military courts for spreading harmful propaganda.

President Museveni has since banned the payment of allowances to soldiers on guard duties, saying it has encouraged mercenary tendencies among them.

welfare

Last year, the UPDF increased the salaries of the army generals to more than Shs10m, but the soldiers of the lower ranks were not catered for. Many of the low-ranking soldiers earn less than Shs500,000 per month as salary.

In 2019, during President Museveni’s tour of army divisions in the country, the UPDF promised to construct 30,000 housing units to fill the 53,000-unit housing gap. The project hasn’t yet taken off.  The UPDF only has 7,000 housing units of the 60,000 it needs.

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