A robbery just happened in front of us but no one saw it

Author: Daniel K Kalinaki. PHOTO/FILE. 

A few years ago, suspicious fires started burning part of Owino, one of the largest markets in downtown Kampala. Whatever precautions the market vendors took never seemed to work; they would rebuild their stalls, reopen, only for another fire to come in a few months later and raze it to the floor. 

 It did not take long for the blame to shift from the fire to the victims. Why were they even selling combustible items in the middle of the city? Why were they even in the city? Why wasn’t the market made more modern? 

Soon after part of the market was carved open for ‘re-development’ by people who are very well known, together with their beneficial owners. The investigations into the fires were never made public so claims of arson were never proven independently but the crisis caused by the fires was all the opportunity certain people needed to smash and grab.

A new fire has now been lit by the Ministry of Finance going into government ministries and agencies and forcing them to vomit some of their budgetary allocations to help pay for a response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Ordinarily this wouldn’t be surprising; when unforeseen events occur or “fall without showing”, plans should be re-examined, redrawn, and aligned to the new reality.

Yet this resizing of budgets comes less than a month after the reading of the budget for the new financial year that started only a week ago, and a good 18 months after coronavirus was declared a pandemic.

 On the face of it, technocrats somehow forgot that we were in the middle of a pandemic or hoped that it would simply be written off with the end of the financial year. How else can we explain people sitting around a table in March 2021 and setting aside money for foreign travel and workshops but not for vaccines?

 How can we be responding to the coronavirus pandemic in emergency terms when it has been around since the beginning of last year?

This is an “engineered emergency” and not even a very clever trick, having already been played last year. When coronavirus was declared a pandemic and Uganda joined the rest of the world in locking down its economy last March, the budget was recalled, save for salaries and wages.

In the six months to September when things began opening up a little, there were no workshops, no foreign trips, and no vehicles bought. Those who pay attention will note that even road works paid for by the government slowed down as payments to contractors dried up.

Where did this money go? Like the stalls in Owino market, most of it went up in smoke. As the Auditor General has noted, a lot of what was allocated to the health sector was stolen, paid to entities that are yet to deliver, or cannot be accounted for. That which was not at least nominally allocated to the health response disappeared into the black hole of the deep state, which also just happened to be quite busy at the same time with elections.

 There was no relief to taxpayers, and no payroll support for firms that promised not to lay off workers. Commercial banks were allowed to roll over loans to give temporary relief, but borrowers got no such reprieve and many instead now find themselves having to pay interest on interest on principal sums borrowed.

An entire national budget ‘disappeared; right in front of our eyes and there is nothing to show for it. 

There is little to show that this new reallocation of budgets will be more transparent, or that the money will find better use. 

If last year offers any lessons, we are going to buy inflated items because it is an emergency, pre-pay suspect vendors because they happen to be the authorised distributors of the goods we happen to need and conduct direct procurements “because people are dying” and we must act fast. 

Sometimes living in Uganda is a bit like walking through the old crowded Owino market. On a bad day you felt a hand go down into your pocket and fish out your wallet, but you feared screaming for help because the thugs would surround you and accuse you of being the thief. Wash your feet; it’s going to be a long night. 

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and  poor man’s freedom fighter

Twitter: @Kalinaki