Let elders die without mockery

Several days back, Simba FM featured voices of some of the beneficiaries of the government policy of doling out money to elderly people.

The sample voices were mainly in Kayunga District. Listening to them was a painful experience.

For the record, their Shs25,000 monthly allowance was initially supposed to be bigger, and for citizens above 60 or 65. At implementation, the figure came down and the age apparently went up to 80.

Now, if we searched for the most dubious of all the dubious policies under the NRM government, this scheme would be a very strong contender.

Apart from age, what are the other criteria used to decide who qualifies?

If it is not by random chance, you would suppose it is the very old who are not on a government pension or some other institutional retirement scheme, and who have no investment or savings to turn to. But many of these people seem not to be beneficiaries of the new scheme.

Uganda being now a vampire state, is it possible that functionaries variously involved in implementation reap more from the scheme than the ‘lucky’ elders?

The samples of lucky elders Simba FM interviewed spoke of the misery of being a beneficiary.

Starting with the amount, Shs25,000 (less than $7) entitles the elder to exactly 1½ kg of ordinary beef. Or 4kg of rice. Or 5kg of beans. Or 3kg of groundnuts.

As I have noted, the procedure followed and the criteria are something of a mystery, even to the elders themselves.

Then, once listed, there is the nightmare of the elder trying to follow whatever looks or smells like progress in the bureaucracy that processes the payments. Our people call this ‘chasing’, without which almost all Uganda’s institutions under NRM rule deliver nothing.

Not to have read the work of Franz Kafka is to be illiterate. And many of our elderly folk out there are illiterate. But their experience reminds us of the illusions, frustration and despair in Kafka’s stories.

From their voices, the beneficiaries spend amazing lengths of time and phone airtime, not to mention costly journeys to the LC and district offices, before they get their hands on this tiny pittance.

Some beneficiaries face repeated identification issues.

Beneficiaries are sometimes given a specific date, only to reach the relevant office and be given another date.

For reasons that again are not clear, it seems common for a beneficiary to miss out on several months’ payments, making a mockery of what is supposedly a monthly allowance.

Thinking about the elderly inevitably brings up the youth.

Over the years, the NRM government has squandered – and its officials stolen – trillions of shillings on populist policies and misguided youth programmes.

Now we have millions of young people who hate or despise honest serious work and are encouraged by NRM politicians to imagine getting rich quickly from petty cash handouts once or twice every five-year presidential term.

Above the ordinary old people and youth and their misery, NRM rule has engineered layers of privilege; from ministers and MPs to all sorts of local government elder and youth leaders.

Most of them are cynically elevated to fool their constituents that there is an ideological commitment to significantly improve all their livelihoods, but in reality adding to the burden of maintaining the vampire state.

This in turn only prolongs the lamentation and humiliation of the elders of Kayunga District. Why not leave them to die without mockery or illusions?

An alternative government would increase their pittance and spread it more rationally.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.

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