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Tomorrow is Christmas but will it be as nice for you as for rulers?
Musaazi Namiti
What you need to know:
- Many Ugandans are suffering, and the way out can sometimes be risky.
Uganda is one of the nicest places to live when you are not strapped for cash. The climate is almost everything that could be desired, the food is organic and great, the fruits are the envy of everyone who cares about good nutrition and the vegetables are unmatched by any other. More importantly, the cost of living is arguably the lowest imaginable.
But the sad truth is that it is the ruling class, their hangers-on and expatriates who appreciate this fact about our country. How many Ugandans with no connection to rulers can say that they are financially secure and that their Christmas will be as nice as that of the rulers? The short answer is: Not many.
Millions of Ugandans have to fight poverty, and they do not seem to be succeeding.
It is poverty that is forcing thousands of young (and even middle-aged) Ugandans to look for triple-D jobs — dangerous, demeaning and dirty — in the Middle East or anywhere they can find anything called employment.
The rulers will be spoilt for choice when it comes to food and drink. But they expect a teacher or a policeman to live on Shs500,000 a month. Yet if you gave them the same amount for just Christmas shopping, they would complain it is not enough.
Many Ugandans are suffering, and the way out can sometimes be risky.
Last week, I listened to a WhatsApp audio note in which a Ugandan man is claiming that he and other Ugandans were sold into forced labour in Myanmar (formerly Burma) and that they had zero chance of escaping because their passports had been seized by their bosses.
The man alleges that he and his fellow job seekers (all men) had been promised jobs in Thailand paying $1,000 (Shs3.6m) per month. It is a salary many unemployed — and even employed — Ugandans would kill for, considering that it is six times what a primary school teacher makes in six months or what some journalists earn in a year.
There may have been ifs and buts, but the man and his fellow sufferers had to ignore them and travel to Thailand, an upper middle-income Southeast Asian nation famous for tourism. When they reached the capital, Bangkok, the man says, they were put in a car that embarked on a seemingly endless journey. They did not have the vaguest idea about the destination.
They tried to ask why it was taking very long to arrive and why they had already left Thailand behind yet it was supposed to be their duty station, but the men who put them in the car assured them that everything would be alright.
It was a lie. They had started a life of slavery in a country they later learned is Myanmar, which borders Thailand to the west. The man says they work long hours, they are subjected to electric shocks when they complain and their unscrupulous bosses use them to scam strangers using false online identities. Their pay is far less than what they were promised.
I had some doubts when I was listening to the audio. Fake stories, after all, are many. But when I googled “people smuggling + Myanmar +Thailand”, my search results had an article written by the International Organisation for Migration, which quoted Indonesians that had been sold into forced labour in Myanmar. Their stories had striking similarities with what the Ugandan says in the audio.
If it is true, it means he tried to escape poverty but is now trapped in slavery.
Musaazi Namiti is a journalist and former Al Jazeera digital editor in charge of the Africa desk
[email protected] @kazbuk
