Govt needs to be more sensitive to citizens’ needs

It’s now an open secret that Uganda’s economy is not doing well, partly due to the Covid-19 induced lockdowns that rocked the globe before the situation was exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year.

In Uganda, there have been a number of challenges faced by especially the ordinary citizens. There’re, for instance, a number of government workers who went for Christmas without being paid their December salaries. The skyrocketing prices of essential commodities like food have hit the ordinary citizens even harder. Some roads across the country, including the capital Kampala, are in a sorry state.

However, the best response(s) we have got from our leaders in government is to keep waiting as things will work out and settle down by themselves.

In his New Year message, President Museveni said although imported items may be scarce, our own locally produced items like bananas, cassava, millet, beans, maize, beef, milk, fish, eggs, chicken, etc are plenty. They may be expensive because of the fuel that is used to transport them but they will be available, according to him. The question then would be how many ordinary citizens can afford to buy the listed items?

Obviously, every one living in Uganda contributes to the national development of the country, whether directly or indirectly.

The extravagance witnessed among our political leaders at the expense of suffering citizens is inexcusable.

It’s insensitive for government officials to keep telling ordinary Ugandans to tighten their belts because things are bad as they loosen theirs and continue to punish ordinary citizens with high taxes which do not even translate into better service delivery.

It’s, therefore, not surprising that 91 percent of the 12,204 tweeps who participated in an online poll run by this publication’s Twitter handle between December 30, 2022 and January 1, 2023 said none of the three arms of government (Judiciary, Executive and Legislature) had lived to their expectations in 2022.

The Judiciary got 3.4 percent as human rights abuses with impunity continue to rear its ugly head, the Executive got 3.8 percent, while Parliament/Legislature whose new leaders promised to be pro-people after taking oath scored the least mark of 1.5 percent.

As the New Year begins, our leaders need serious soul-searching and pay more attention to the needs of the ordinary citizens and better service delivery.