Prime
Save Uganda, not Ssegirinya
Author: Phillip Matogo. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- Most Ugandans are a health issue away from being cast adrift on the shark-infested seas of bankruptcy.
It was reported by Daily Monitor on Monday that ailing Member of Parliament for Kawempe North Muhammad Ssegirinya, aka Mr Update, might be forced to do the hospital laundry if he failed to pay Shs80 million in medical bills.
Accordingly, the MP said he was willing to wash clothes and clean the hospital if he failed to pay the Shs80m medical bill in a Netherlands hospital where he has been admitted since August 10.
Last week, though, Parliament’s communications director Chris Obore confirmed that the August House would not abandon Ssegirinya. Good.
The government should use this opportunity to save not only Ssegirinya, but all of us.
Most Ugandans are a health issue away from being cast adrift on the shark-infested seas of bankruptcy, infirmity or the ultimate destiny: death.
To navigate this, health should not be treated as an applied science but as a social science.
Here, the social determinants of health must be incorporated into our political processes for us to appreciate their impact upon health and healthcare.
This means disembarrassing our institutional processes from all health inequalities and inequity across the social and political spectrum.
One way of doing this would be to reduce every Ugandan legislator’s pay and perks to fit within the resource envelope of an economic situation gone postal with waste and fat.
Look, our MPs do not receive a salary. Instead, they receive payoffs to ensure they oil the neo-patrimonial State towards stasis.
To be specific, an MP takes home a net monthly salary of Shs6.1m in addition to a buffet of allowances: housing (Shs6.5m), constituency support (Shs17.03m) and town running (Shs1.945m).
Sure, ex-officio legislators or government ministers who do not represent a constituency do not receive the constituency nest-egg.
Still, MPs earn a fuel allowance, technically defined as mileage, ranging between Shs10.3m and Shs31m, depending on the distance from Kampala to one’s constituency.
To top that off, MPs receive a car grant of Shs200m per MP, a free iPad, Shs50,000 allowance for attending committee sessions and a funeral package.
There’s also a family health insurance cover, allowance for travel abroad - $700 (about Shs2.5m) per diem and travel inland of Shs450,000 per diem.
On the average, our 527 MPs each earn about Shs52m per month.
Yet MPs should ideally earn a lot less, as is the case in New Hampshire, USA, where legislators have been paid $200 for a two-year term since 1889.
The presiding officers of both houses of the New Hampshire legislature – called the General Court – receive a salary of $250 (Shs900,000), while all other members get $200 (Shs740,000) plus mileage for 45 legislative days, according to the state constitution.
This is paid from a state budget of $13.5 billion (Shs50 trillion); while Uganda’s national budget is $14 billion (about Shs52 trillion).
New Mexico legislators in the US, with a state budget of $9.57 billion (Shs35 trillion), receive no salary, but they do get about a $153-a-day per diem. This is in the world’s richest country.
In Uganda, on the other hand, more than 40 percent of our people live in absolute poverty. Those who live in relative and situational poverty are far more and ensure most Ugandans would happily wash laundry in return for medical treatment à la Ssegirinya.
However, we change this, especially if we free up the billions of Shillings we pay to Parliament every month for MPs to vote lineally, so that those funds are re-routed to hospitals, dispensaries and clinics across the country.
If this happens, the sunk cost of our current expenditures would be replaced by the opportunity cost of losing an elephantine state in favour of a leaner, meaner government.
Phillip Matogo is a professional copywriter
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