Stop goading taxpayers with superfluous spending

The Ministry of Public Service is seeking Shs7.2b to procure luxury cars for former Cabinet heads such as prime ministers and vice-presidents as part of their emoluments. 

This superfluous spending spree comes barely a month after Parliament splashed nearly Shs3b on luxury cars for its former speakers.

The latest spendthrift plan, revealed by the Parliament Watch Uganda, a virtual centre for policy analysis and monitoring tool that provides relevant data and expert insights on parliamentary business on their official X account, is part of the Public Service ministry’s 2014/25 Budget Framework Paper.

While handing over vehicles for her predecessors last month, Speaker Anita Among revealed that Parliament will be giving its former leaders new cars every five years, and the cost of fuel, maintenance and salaries of the drivers of the vehicles will be bled by taxpayers.

This, in the best civil way a taxpayer can describe, is deeply vulgarised spending. Nobody should lie to Ugandans that their leaders have no sense of shame because they aren’t walking naked yet. Until they have totally hit the south pole, a semblance of hope that they can do the right thing one day, will remain.

For now, there is little evidence of sanity in our priorities when reports from hospitals speak of drug stock out and women are giving birth under tadoba light in dingy ‘health’ facilities.

Most of the so-called leaders rose up to serve their people. They lived all the years masquerading as such. These are people for whom a car, driver and its fuel is the least of their necessities.

The best way to celebrate their service to the nation would be to spend these monies on uplifting the livelihoods of the very constituents they betrayed right around where their gigantic perimeter wall fencing separates the peasants from their opulence.

Unless there is evidence of challenges that necessitates car gifts, it will begin to look as if certain persons are eager to goad the taxpayers with unnecessary extravagant expenditures.

A leader who has served the government and its citizens cannot be blasé to the fact that bleeding the taxpayer will only goad them into hating the government. 

It is unfortunate that these superfluous spendings are, by omission or commission, doing just that to the taxpayers.

It is time the NRM government started looking into how far a few in its ranks will continue to appease themselves at the expense of the taxpayers. 

To start with, the government must immediately review the validity of the entire retirement benefits for public service.