Ugandans Should Interrogate What President
Museven Is Doing With 146 RDCs, 139 Advisors, And 83 Cabinet Ministers
·
The Mantra Of
Small-Government-Big-Business Is A More Critical Than Merging Government
Agencies because you can merge and
remain with a bigger workforce
In the last two to three years
the NRM government has paid lip service to the inevitable need to cut down on the
unnecessary and avoidable expenditures. They
have exuded the art of a man whose heart is willing but the body is weak to undertake
a given task. Some few months ago the
media was awash with suggestions that government was in advanced stages of
merging all agencies that were duplicating roles or blowing resources.
From the look of things however,
it seemed that the government was concentrating all the energies in pursing the
option of merging government agencies at the expense of other measures that can
lead to a sizeable reduction on the cost of administration.
A few months ago (around August)
state minister for public service Hon Mary Grace Mugasa presented a report to the NRM
Parliamentary Caucus which revealed that that government had resolved to
retain 88 government agencies and merge, mainstream, and transfer the functions
of 69 agencies out of 157 that had been reviewed in 2018.
This was intended to
streamline government architecture to enable efficient and effective service
delivery and mostly address wasteful expenditure and challenges of duplication
of work, conflicts and mandate overlap.
The immediate implication
was that Uganda was to save up to UGX 649 billion ($167,148,846) annually from
the rationalization, merging, and mainstreaming of agencies of 53 government
agencies and functions according to the Ministry of Public Service.
This move deserves a
clap or standing ovation of some sort.
We honestly applaud the
move to trim public expenditure by taking on the rationalization reform to
merge several of these autonomous which were agreeably created without clear
justification, some being pseudo-government projects, while others have had
their mandates overtaken by events.
However there are justified
claims that these agencies were formed to increase efficiency in service delivery
but the problem now portends on whether an appraisal has been carried out to determine
whether the desired objectives have been achieved or not before undertaking the
merging process.
AN APPRAISAL
There are those that have
lived to their expectations and indeed delivered while others have been
practical failures. The obvious should have been to simply trust the mainstream
agencies to deliver to their expected mandate rather than creating new ones. For
instance the state house anticorruption desk is doing what the IGG is supposed to
do.
The Multiplicity of
these government agencies should have never happened to begin with because the
Ugandan taxpayer has been overburdened by an over-bloated public service. These
bourgeoning agencies have over time become a major strain on the national
treasury at the expense of efficient service delivery.
Despite of the fact
that it is a good move to embark on the merging and streamline of these agencies,
it’s not enough. More needs to be done to cut down on the cost of public administration.
THE FACTS
The 2021 Auditor
General’s report shows that only 13 out of the 26 public corporation and state
enterprises evaluated were profit-making.
In august this year President Museveni supported the decision
and accused most of the government agencies for not working but rather spending
the money allocated to them from their mother ministries and implored the NRM
MPs to back the rationalization reform
He also said apart
from research and farmer institutions only profit-making parastatals should be
spared while money-eating parastatals should be gotten rid of in order to save
government billions of shillings.
But the president did not elaborate on whether the bigger
cabinet, bigger parliament of 520 MPs, a hundreds of presidential advisors and RDCs,
which are not known to make any profit to the state coffers.
At 71 ministers strong, Uganda has the third largest cabinet
in the world after North Korea and Kenya. This is in circumstances where the
global average of ministers is 30 while average for Sub-Saharan Africa is 40.
Rwanda has
got a cabinet of 27 and Burundi 29 ministers but you can justify that by saying
that they are much smaller countries with a smaller population than Uganda to necessitate
a bigger cabinet.
But it’s shocking that much bigger countries
have smaller cabinet than Uganda. For instance Nigeria which is five times
bigger with a population of 211 million people has only got 54 cabinet
ministers.
In Tanzania following the late president John Pombe Magufuli's
reelection in the 2020 he unveiled his new cabinet of 23 ministers yet Tanzania
is about 4 times bigger than Uganda.
President Museven has the tendency of hoodwinking
Ugandans by showing that he has got the spirit to spirit to improve things yet
the on the contrary the reality is completely the opposite.
As we speak, Museven has got more advisors than
any known president on earth with 139 of them siphoning state resources with
impunity.
YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO THIS;
In January this year the Office of the President of Uganda
reported a funding gap of sh5.1 billion to enable the purchase of vehicles for
the newly recruited presidential advisors that included new ones like former
prime ministers Hon Amama Mbabazi , Ruhakana Rugunda and former vice presidents
Edward Sekandi and Prof Gilbert Bukenya. Another sh4.23 billion was also needed
to facilitate investiture ceremonies and procurement of medals, while sh7
billion has been budgeted for construction of office space for Resident
District Commissioners (RDCs.
According to research we found out
that the NRM government deployed a total of 146 RDCs and 107 of these are
renting, 15 are in government-built houses and 24 are in houses owned by
districts. Some of the government constructed houses are in the districts of
Lamwo, Abim, Amuru, Kiryandongo, Kamuli, Buhweju, Bundibugyo, Lwengo, Rubirizi,
Butaleja, Adjumani, Butambala, Otuke and Luuka.
According to reliable sources the office
of the President constructs only one office accommodation each year. This
implies that it would take the Office of the President 110 years to construct houses
for all RDCs!
With all this, you don’t need a
rocket scientist to show you were Ugandan tax payers money is being wasted.
THE
WAY FORWARD
Ugandans should interrogate what president Museven
is doing with 146 RDCs, 139 advisors, and 83 cabinet ministers?
Before he postures to
rationalize and merge government agencies he should first justify the cost of administration
in regard to officials that work directly for him.
Fred Daka Kamwada Is A Policy Analyst,
Researcher And Blogger
kamwadafred@gmail.com
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