President Museveni says he has identified house-hold incomes, free education, illegal evictions, theft of government drugs in the health Centres, corruption among government officials and working on feeder roads as the six areas which the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) must closely guide Ugandans to achieve their dreams.
According to Mr Museveni, corruption has become a big problem for Ugandans. “Yet, it is easy to stop. You saw what happened to the Officers in the Prime Minister’s Office. They are all in jail. There are some colluders who have been trying to help them to keep some of the money they stole. We know who they are. They will be netted. I do not want to list all the other fellows accused of stealing because I do not want to be accused of going against the law of sub-judice – do not comment on matters that are in Court. We shall defeat the corruption, like we defeated the other challenges,” Mr Museveni said during his party’s national delegates’ conference at Namboole on Saturday.
Mr Museveni noted that the six areas identified above are the “very important pro-people measures” that his government needs to ensure.
On monetizing the economy and society, Mr Museveni who has been in power for over three decades claims that production figures have gone up.
“Coffee from two million-60kg bags, we are now producing five million bags; bananas, we are at 10 million metric tonnes and have the capacity to go from 5.3 tonnes per hectare to 53 metric tonnes per hectare…. This is how you hear that the economy has been growing at the rate 6.3 percent per annum for the last 33 years and it now stands at $34.2 billion (FY 2018/19) by the exchange rate method or $ 87 billion (FY 2017/18) by the PPP method having been only $0.4billion in 1986,” he said.
According to him, this growth would not have occurred if his government had not semi-modernized the infrastructure.
“Power generation will soon stand at 1,767megawatts with the commissioning of Karuma, Agago and other plants from the 60 megawatts of 1986. We have linked, with tarmac roads, the 6 directions of the compass from border to border as follows: East – West – Busia – Malaba to Busuunga – Mpondwe in the West (625 kms); North to South – Nimule – Musiingo to Entebbe (475 kms); Oraba in the North-West to Murongo – Mirama hill – Mutukula in the South East (783 kms); Cyanika, Bunagana in the South – West to Moroto in the North East ( 945 kms); and Malaba – Busia to Hoima –Kaiso-toonya in another section of the East-West direction ( 477 kms),” he added.
This article was originally published on The Daily Monitor.