The strength of an individual can best be tested at the time of adversity, not cheerfulness. For three decades, public opinion in Uganda has been divided on whether the current government has done more to better than harm the country's socio-economic and governance discourse. The outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic as declared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in March 2020 came as a shock to most people and registered disruptions to humanity. Irrespective of its known implications, on the sideways, it helped citizens not only in Uganda but also in other leaping democracies to witness first-hand, the dept of the rot their governance systems.
In whatever shape, pandemic or no pandemic, the level of unseriousness exhibited by the government in handling the situation from all fronts has completely exposed the highest degree of disorganisation. From failure to prioritize, administration loopholes to petty embezzlement, we all witnessed one of the laziest governments in modern times. Seventeen months after the first case was recorded in Uganda, only 1,524,527 million have been tested and less than a million people have been vaccinated. By the look of things, the government’s capacity to deal with this pandemic rests on a thread, given the statistics at hand.
Over time, there have been changes in case definitions of Covid 19, due to the occurrence of variants, poor compliance to SOPs among the population and evident inadequate equipment supplies at health facilities. This confirms the existence of loopholes in the cases and general data reported by the government of Uganda. The absence of health workers’ incentives and personal protective equipment (PPE) is another challenge, among others.
Given how unserious the current government is, the country is seating on a time bomb, that will manifest itself through crushing the existing natural social systems. It’s these natural social systems that have long saved people from adversity. The country with over eight million people living in abject poverty did not show any sign of operationalising the social protection programme. In this aspect, only 1.5 million people received government relief support in both the first and second lockdowns (just once). In the first lockdown, beneficiaries were given 8kg of posho to cover more than sixty days of total lockdown. In the second lockdown, individuals were given one hundred thousand Uganda shillings to cover 42 days of lockdown.
It should be noted that there is a section of Ugandans whose livelihood was cut off since the first lockdown and they have been living in a state of vulnerability for the last one and a half years. These include private school teachers, bar and nightclub owners and their employees, as well as religious leaders. The fate of these employees has never been discussed by anyone in government. Using this perspective, the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development has never provided any report to shade a picture on those that lost employment as a result of the pandemic and the recovery plan.
With the absence of a streamlined programme on vaccination and testing, even the current partial lockdown is redundant. Locking people down is a gesture of asking them to hold on and be patient as you organise yourself to find a solution. The situation in Uganda is different, people are patiently holding on with limited hope for a solution. They only wait to watch and read the news headlines quoting how much has been stolen. The greatest risk lies in the loss of public trust in the pandemic responses. This reduces risk perception among the populace leading to a decline in adherence to SOPs.
As the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT), we think there is a need to make sure that the policy on Covid 19 pandemic prevention and control is practical. Ensuring that responses are decentralised, implementers equipped and empowered to always spearhead surveillance. Let politics rest and evidence-based research be given a priority for the first time. Once this is sorted, politicians can regain their platform and joke with other less threatening issues in future, if it does not include the lives of Ugandans. Striking a balance between what is important and urgent, is another aspect that ANT would give a priority. Surviving such embarrassments requires us to think twice and do introspection on Uganda’s future. God bless you!
Sedrack Atuhaire
Email: sedrack69@gmail.com