WHY IS UGANDA POOR?
Now can someone at the Kampala city council explain this to me. Rather, can someone from the ministry of Works Housing and Communication and Kampala City Council expalin this to me and hundreds of us motorists.
You wake up at 5.00pm (already very early) and clean up to start off the day. That takes about 45 minutes to 1 hr. Anyway by 6.30 a.m you are rearing to go. You live in Wakiso, Nansana, Kasubi, Nakulabye - generally west of Kampala - and vroom to work via dropping a pupil or some other compulsory duty.
You drive off to town in a dusty car - Kampala is a very dusty city these days - thanks to road works that never get off to a finish. Notice how that is very Ugandan or rather the preferred modus operandi for our Ministries and local government. One would shrug this off for vindictive exageration. Correction……….
The Jinja Bugiri road rehabilitation has never taken off. The road was dug up in August last year. One year later, bickering on the true cost of the road by government and the contractor brought the reconstruction to a halt. Motorists were left to endure breakdown of their vehicles, car owners to unnecessary repair costs, the local communities in Busoga to endless dust, mud and its attendant dangers, flu, malaria etc and yes accidents; and the country, angiush. By the way, for good measure, a bridge curved in 5 km from Iganga and effectively cutoff road communication with eastern Uganda nad Kenya for five days.
So you can now see from just one example how this culture of neglect can wreck havoc on us poor Ugandans.
Anyway back to Nakulabye. It is now 7.30 am and you are enduring in the jam. You are face to face with a four-lane one-way traffic to the city centre. It happens that the ripple effect of road neglect means that our ever enterprising mini-bus drivers will ignore basic driving tenet and block on coming traffic so they will reach the ’new park’ in time to make a return journey for a kill on the human traffic waiting for thier turn.
So the road culture compound with the culture of neglect synchronize to vaporise time. Time to be early at work. Time to beat deadline.Time to make that appointment. Now the road is a mess of mostly Japanese car makes that should have been recycled, but now are property of proud Ugandans who have harvested the peace ushered in by NRA, rather - twatera embundu.
Reality check. It is 8.00a.m. You, you are a statistic in a mesh of raw dust, rusty metal and rubber, lingering flu epidermic, potential cholera outbreak, the revving, putrid smell clutch plate afire; and an impending fireball from that hydrocarbon simmering in the tanks. What else? The tempers are high. Commuters, high on impatience, are now a vexious congregation of misfits; foul-mouthed; insolent and ready to explode. The traffic police at Nakulabye round-about are just a spectacle helpless in khaki.
That sets you thinking. Why does the government start a works project and then prefer that a snail should travel faster. Or rather, why does government put the life of its people at risk? The risk of lost manhours, deaths from fire, lost school time, sickness for local people?. And more, why do Kampalans so mindlessly ignore moral turpitude? Why?
To cap it all the disaster preparedness in this country is of quixotic proportions. No oxygen at the National Referral Hospital for six months, not least the necessary medical and clinical intruments, medicines and aid. And?, the police fire department routinely arrive at disaster scenes after the damage is beyond salvation or rather, never in most instances.
Finally, it is 8.20 a.m. You are at Wandegeya junction and some sanity has returned on the road. However, the car has a new coat of paint - earth brown-heavy on laterite, low on fuel and the driver? vexed to a pounding headache. You leave the lane after 2 minutes because the Japanese grant that enabled this road ensured planned approach, timed and leveled.
Question. Why is Uganda a poor country? Answer. The culture of neglect - incompetence, the indiscipline of the people and absence of mechanisms to translate good values into people.
See you next time.
Geria
