Africa-Press – Uganda. Over the past few years, President Museveni and his government have spoken passionately about the need to trim public expenditure.
Finance minister Matia Kasaija has also recently been unequivocal in revealing that he doesn’t have enough money to deliver on all the promises.
This has hastened the need to rationalise government agencies which will see up to 53 of them folded in a bid to reduce public expenditure.
None of this is new as it has been in the pipeline but pre-set timelines have not been met as there are so many loose ends to tie.
It’s not even rocket science that Uganda needs to trim its public expenditure as stated in a public service sector review report released in 2018.
In February 2021, Cabinet approved a roadmap for rationalisation of government agencies, commissions, authorities and public enterprises.
The most recent Auditor General’s report indicated that only 13 of the 26 public corporation and state enterprises analysed made profits.
Some included Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Ltd (UETCL), Uganda Electricity Generation Company Ltd (UEGCL) and National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC).
Last week, President Museveni met the ruling party parliamentary caucus in a bid to sell his plans to close some agencies.
MPs, through a report by an Ad Hoc Committee, raised concern about the impact of the proposed rationalisation of government agencies, urging the ministry to protect employees whose agencies have been affected.
While the plans are good in whole, it has to go beyond returning some agencies to their mother ministries. One of the items that costs the Ugandan taxpayer highly is the huge government fleet.
Provision of four wheel-drive fuel guzzlers is no longer necessary. The plan should be to allow public officials to buy their own cars in a soft loan scheme.
Most of these officials can afford cars and it doesn’t make sense to provide one that costs hundreds of millions of shillings.
In addition, it’s hard to find anyone who can defend why we need the sizes of cabinet and parliament that we have recently.
There is also the eternal cry to cut down on the budget of the State House and the Office of the President by merging the two.
Some will argue that the government still needs to provide jobs for its people but nowhere in the world is the government the primary source of employment.
Most of this money saved must be diverted to support the private sector that will then provide the bulk of jobs for the professionals rendered redundant inside the bloated government system.
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