In Uganda we turned the development model upside down. In the developed and upper middle income economies, if you want to get rich you join the private sector and if you want to provide public services you join the public sector. Nobody including Presidents in the west got/gets rich by working in the public sector. In Uganda, we want to be billionaires or even trillionaires by working in the public sector. How can it be possible? Through high levels of corruption and making the majority of the best paying jobs to be in the public sector including Parliament of Uganda. These some Ugandans want to be MPs at whatever cost. We recently saw Judicial officers being compromised. Even in the coming contests fornSpeaker and Deputy Speaker, expect every MP to receive not les than ugx 100Million. Those who will spend it will find a way of getting it back.
What makes it worse is that in Uganda the major employer is the public sector. So most of the time the government is trying to create jobs for Ugandans in MDAs. This has led to high administrative expenditure that leaves little resources for social services.
We need to reset the button. The salaries and remuneration commission that can set and control salaries including those of Parliament is long overdue. We have talked and written about but nothing has been done. By June 2027, don't be surprised if an MP is paid UGX 100Million per month. Yet most of these are S6 certificate holders or equivalent.
We also need to focus on creating jobs in the private sector through government continuing to ensure an enabling environment and making it easy to do business in Uganda. Today if you go into the outskirts of Kampala, you see small supermarkets on the verge of closure. Is the economy doing well? Are Ugandans getting richer equitably?