President Yoweri Museveni has said developing a country is not a joke and that government has no capacity to act God and perform miracles saying government’s development plan is to implement priority programmes for the whole country.
“Our country is big and the things to do are also many. In the education sector, our plan is to have a primary and secondary school in every parish, a health centre III at each sub county with 19 health workers and a Health Centre IV with 49 health workers in each constituency saying if these are not in place, the people have a right to raise an alarm and a red flag,” he said, adding that government does some other projects ad hoc.
The President urged Ugandans to take stock of the infrastructure development including new classroom buildings, schools, roads and electricity that have been worked on.
The President was today presiding over the ground breaking ceremony of upgrading the Mukono-Katosi/Kisoga-Nyenga road from gravel to bitumen standard at Kisoga St. Balikuddembe S.S.S grounds in Mukono district. The 74km long road will take three years to complete at a cost of Shs 165billion shillings and will make the main link starting from Wantoni junction in Mukono Municipality through Kyetume to Katosi. The other spur from Kisoga eastwards through Nkonkonjeru to Nyenga in West of Jinja will provide an alternative route to aid the congested Kampala-Jinja road to Eastern Uganda and finally to Kenya’s International Port of Mombasa.
The President who gave an indepth history of Uganda’s economy since 1986 said while at the time the country was collecting only Shs 5bn in taxes, with the return of peace and security to provide confidence to investors, more factories have returned and new ones build enabling the country to collect over Shs 9000bn in taxes.
“Money is from taxes not witchcraft; that you smoke a pipe and a road appears. This is still much money but the demands are also many. Even God took 7 days to make the world; he took his time to do everything before resting and making a human being. How about us the humans, how can we do everything on one day,” he said.
The President said he took a firm stand and refused to give civil servants and teachers a pay raise opting instead to put the money in infrastructure development.
“Nasiimba ekuuli (I took a firm stand) last year, If I had not done that, we would not have money for the infrastructure. But this year because the money has been increasing, we decided to give the civil servants a salary raise,” he said adding that government had set aside money for infrastructure which has improved the road network and ensured that districts such as Karamoja, Moroto, Katakwi and Abim among others that had never seen power now have it.
Using a local saying to describe the opposition that he described as full of pokopoko and being alarmist, “If a person is walking through the neighbours garden, they are always in a hurry and don’t care about destroying the neighbours crops but when they are going through their own gardens they are careful not to step on their crops.” He urged the people to ignore their alarmist propaganda because they are only out to make it impossible for government to work.
On wealthy creation, the President acknowledged that the people had a right to demand better services from the government as over seers and emphasized that his government is doing everything possible to promote development for the country, he however asked them what they are doing for their own homes in terms of creating wealth and fighting poverty.
“Separate development from wealth in your homes. In my home in Kisozi, Gomba, I have a farm for cows. Cows don’t eat tarmac or electricity, just grass. I bring my cows using murram roads to slaughter houses in Kampala they don’t complain. Government programmes are going on but it is your responsibility to ensure that your homes have wealth. Use modern agro production and the four acre formulae to fight poverty. This is important,” he said.
The Minister of Works and Transport Eng Abraham Byandala said the road solely funded by the Republic of Uganda is in fulfillment of the pledges by the NRM government to the people of Uganda in its strategy to fight poverty, promote economic development and regional integration.