Congratulations my sister. You are the first PM under M7 to serve as Acting President. And I know you will give a good speech today.
I come from Luweero. Our people are very bitter that govt forgot them yet we paid the biggest price to bring NRM govt to power.
The roads are very bad, poverty high, hospitals in terrible state, they complain they are not considered in top govt appointments for CEOs, permanent secretaries. We don’t have a single general in the army
We asked Nakaseke Hospital to be upgraded to a regional refferal hospital and Bukalasa Agricultural College to be upgraded to a specialized University. Our requests were ignored.
Whereas the NRM govt has constructed factories in the west, north, and East, it has not constructed a single factory on taxpayers money in Luweero.
We grow mangoes and pineapples. For so long we have been promised a fruit factory but it has never been delivered.
We requested for tractors to get our people out of subsistence farming, but the tractors were not delivered.
The Luweero ministry is useless to us. Ask them to tell us what they have done for Greater Luweero in the last five years. Completely nothing. The small budget the ministry is given is spent on administrive costs and the balance which lacks accountsbility is reportedly spent on kasiimo/gratuity for veterans who are picked from the entire nation. The last time the ministry officials appeared before PAC, they had no records of veterans that had benefited over the years. That is why as Greater Luweero Devt Forum, we held a press conference and called for the abolition of the Luweero-Rwenzori Ministry and have it replaced with a Development Fund which area residents can directly access to support their economic activities to improve their economic welfare.
Both the central govt and elected local leaders have not seriously mobilized our people to embrace PDM. Our districts are among the worst performers in PDM and Emyooga.
We are also greatly concerned that the very political injustices the that took NRA/Museveni to start a civil war that left thousands of our people dead are happening under the NRM govt.
After 37 years in power, the country is yet to have a credible electoral system trusted by citizens yet it was the rigging of the 1980 elections by UPC that promoted the creation of NRA. We have thousands of political prisoners in our prisons and hundreds of citizens have been killed and others severely tortured over political reasons.
Corruption is very rampant and the building of national unity has failed because of the high rate of tribalism and nepotism citizens see happening in govt entities where jobs are rarely given out on merit.
Therefore, as we remember the heroes today, the blood of the people of Greater Luweero who perished in the war cries for vindication.
Moses Mulondo (BMcom, MBA Makerere University),
Coordinator of Greater Luweero Development Forum, and Former President of Uganda Parliamentary Press Association. Currently working as Vision Group Senior Business Editor
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