L_Cpl Otto:
Professor Kamuntu should have reflected on his own admission that only 9% of Ugandans have electricity. If that is the case, how come the country is teaming with youth if only those with electricity are overdoing it?
Professor Kamuntu should be helping the government to come up with credible measures to curb the population explosion. Uganda will not come close to meeting its millennium goals if the population growth continues to grow at that rate. Similarly Uganda won’t be able to offer effective health care to the people with such numbers. It simply can’t even with plentiful oil money in the future.
Ugandans do not seem to appreciate the strong macroeconomic growth because the micro economic fundamentals are terrible. Very little attention has been paid to the household level which is both the victim and author of their own fate.
I understand the jist of Professor Kamuntu’s assertion: that lack of leisure and work activities forces Ugandans to engage in sexual activities. he should live that to undergraduate students of micro economics. As the the minister in charge of planning it was very timid. He should tell Ugandans the uncomfortable truth, which is that as long as they continue to produce many babies, their fate is doomed. Period. Done.
There is no magic bullet out of poverty at the household level. Needless to say, households with more children are likely to be poorer than households with fewer children. As the minister in charge of planning that is the message he should convey to Ugandans religiously. As they say he should stay on message over and over.
The big question is how to get there given the socially conservative environment in the country. Is the government of Uganda prepared to confront the elephant in the house and extend affordable, safe and accessible family planing services to those Ugandan women who want them? The minister can talk of natural methods if they want but the most effective method is well known.
Ugandans cannot have their cake and eat it too. No way. The best and yes more efficient method was the one suggested by Mr Onyango-Obbo in his Daily Nation column that to save Africa, time has come to levy a tax on babies. Incidentally land tax would also be the most efficient in the country but Ugandans are allergic to taxation (read the big men are the largest landholders). Yes, raise the cost of having babies without shifting the burden and cost on the poor Ugandan women. That could do the trick faster than this electricity angle.
The Minister as a respected economist should also help the state review the legacy of its policies. Are some govt policies contributing to the population explosion? For example could UPE and USE be having unintended consequences on population? How? Now that the barriers to education are no more even those Ugandans who may have sought of family planing/child spacing may not care anymore now that the burdens have been relieved.
You know Ugandans and their mentality “let us now produce the govt will educate” so they say. But wait a minute the govt won’t feed or dress those kids. Yes, it is proposing to treat them for free but not yet. Are the very policies aimed to hep Ugandans hurting them instead? That is for the govt to review and change course if necessary.
To be brunt, there is no political will to address the population explosion and its attendant poverty in Uganda. As a result the state is killing Ugandan women who have to produce until God relieves them of the burden.
WBK
Comments
On population explosion in Uganda. This could also be attributed to the scourage of AIDS. Very many young people have died leaving their families wiped out or towards extinction. Death has created a yarning for life replcement in babies. Education can create a better Uganda on life replacement. Education on contentment on a small family.
Ugandans need to be educated on the new drugs that have AIDS patients live longer. Together with it they should teach Ugandans to have one sexual partner. It is both an anti-dot for AIDS and large families.
Uganda must also not forget that its hospitality to refugees of neibouring countries has contributed to Uganda sudden Population swelling. Somalia, the Congo (DRC), Rwanda and The Sudan. I am proud that Uganda welcomed them. Some refugees go back and others marry while others have not yet made up their minds with what to do.
The Best thing to do with Uganda population is not to kill off people. Not to start a war! Not to starve people.
CURBING POPULATION GROWTH WITH EDUCATION
It is Education how to surrvive in a tight populated nation. Teach them about China with each family producing one child.Teach them about Rwanda that started a War because one of the reasons was they were bursting at their seems with their population. Rwanda had even asked its people abroad not to return because they were full!!. This was unkind to the population.
Uganda Can now teach each person to have about three children and if they made a family to add only two children. Not to kill the three each may already have. Still eight children in a family helps little of our families and reduction of population.
The ideal should be to have may be four children. This creates the ABORTION PROBLEM!!! What do we do after experiencing useless ABORTIONS!!?
MEN SHOULD THEN TAKE UP THE BIRTH STOPPAGE PROBLEM AND LIVE THE WOMEN WITH THE PRODUCING PROBLEM OF FOUR CHILDREN. SPIRITUALLY UGANDANS ESPECIALLY WOMEN MAY NOT WELCOME ABORTION IN A FAMILY. LIKE MY MOTHER, A MOTHER OF TWELVE, BORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN, A MOTHER OF TWINS. No one can convince her to listen to abortion her own or any of her grandchildren being aborted!
Yes, the road for family planning is difficult1! A suitable birth control Method must be introduced other than the usual ABORTION!. My mother does not think that giving birth is a burden. She believes she is doing God’s Work.
Therefore our Churches, our Schools, our leaders must educate the masses to reduce their birth rate or frequency in order to compliment government efforts to nurture a healthy population apart from fighting poverty.
The Eglish saying, ‘Educate a woman and you educate aNation and educate a man and you educate an individual’. Must be applied. MEN AND WOMEN must be both educaed on reduction of FAMILY SIZE. This matter is URGENT to control the population growth in Uganda. Please ask the experts on population reduction.
CARE OF THE ELDERLY
A programme to care for old people would go a long way to be an insurance for old age care. Many people produce to cater for old age. With AIDS it became extra frightening that families and young ones died before old age . It left the old with no hope… It left people frightened of old age! This is the chance for the State to take care of the old ones and to ensure that all the old men whose pensions have been corruptly withheld are paid not only in full but on time.
PENSIONS MUST BE ON TIME, REMUNERATIVE AND AVAILABLE
It makes no sense to buy an aeroplane of two billion Dollars when men of over 95 years like my father have to cry to get their pension after serving over 40 years as Civil Servants. I still remember the East African Community Pensioners that used to send me to President Museveni to ask him pay their pension!. Iam also pensionable but top evil government officials prefer a pensioner dead to paying him/her. That is how evil could our leaders become!!. monstrous is not heavy enough for their description.
Many died without even the first payment.