Prime
Emyooga cash: MPs are getting pennywise
Matsiko Kahunga
In a rare stroke of luck, our new Members of Parliament got an early low-hanging fruit onto which to exercise their ‘oversight role’ and prove biting power to their ‘voters’ (no longer citizens, but voters? Uhmmm !). This is their current rage against the misuse (proper use, says Mzee Mashurubu), of the Emyooga Funds.
Emyooga scheme, both in its connotational misnomer and modus operandi, is performing as expected.
And for our MPs to spend their first ‘100-days’ effort on this, is being pennywise…, or bringing it closer home, they are sinking their teeth onto mukene while some monster is daily swallowing our Mpuuta. Mukene is Ugandan silverfish sardines, while empuuta is our invaluable Nile Perch, the aquatic living renewable gold we donate daily to foreign interests( a full treatise on this for another day).
Our dear honourables, here is what deserves your ‘100-days’ attention. For starters, Uganda urgently needs an anti-trust law, to stem monopolies and restrictive commercial practices.
What anti-trust legislation does is this: it bars a manufacturer from selling their products directly to consumers. The implication here is that a company manufacturing safety matches will have five regional distributors, one in each commercial region of Uganda. Below them, the distributors will have wholesalers in each district under their business territory.
And the wholesalers will sell to the retailers in their territory, and the retailers will sell to users of safety matches. This is how wealth is spread and shared. This is how jobs are created. This is how income is assured. This is how life is improved. What pertains currently in Uganda is a situation where manufacturers operate retail kiosks!
With the anti-trust law in place comes a competition agency, to regulate commercial practices, especially mergers and acquisitions which, unregulated grow into cartels. And since we are good at seeking conformity with established global practices, the establishment of a competition agency will be in line with the Comesa Competition Commission provisions, to which Uganda is a member and its current Board Chairman is Ugandan!
As you begin your calendar of ‘benchmarking’ trips (one already ticked off, to Turkey!!)), a visit closer home, to Kenya will boost your ‘100-days’ target achievement.
Thanks to her anti-trust legislation and its enforcement agency, the Competition Authority of Kenya, national wealth from the country’s manufacturing and commercial sectors is distributed across the value chains via authorised distributors, wholesalers, retailers.
Thus, a multinational company manufactures chocolates (usually with local ownership percentage or franchise manufacturing), while indigenous Kenyan companies are the authorised distributors, wholesalers, retailers.
A related reinforcing policy and practice worth benchmarking is the country’s human development programme, with a full authority in charge of this. NITA( National Industrial Training Authority) oversees the skilling of Kenyan employees in all sectors. It works thus: every employer, with five employees and above, makes a statutory obligatory payment into the national skilling fund, managed by NITA.
NITA pre-qualifies training companies in the various domains. Companies hire the pre-qualified trainers for their staff and pass the invoice to NITA who pay the trainers. Each company thus ensures its staff are trained, since the funds are non-refundable and compulsory.
The secret of Kenyans dominating management positions in the region lies therein. Multinationals preferring Kenya as their base into the region lies therein.
To these two, dear honourables, add the Counterfeits Bill, the banning of imported used underwear, used socks, used shavers, used toothbrushes, used face towels, used handkerchiefs, used floor moppers, pig offals…and Uganda will import labour into our import-substitution industries.
Is this difficult?
Matsiko Kahunga
