Uganda - Feed the cow to get milk, Mr President (editorial)

September 6th, 2009

 

 

Kampala (Uganda) - Ugandan workers are an overtaxed lot. This is partly because they are few- for the purposes of taxation at least. Just over 300,000 contribute to the government mandated pension fund.

Even if according to trade union estimates the private sector has close to two million employees. If the tax base were theoretically widened, it would share out the tax burden and reduce the amount paid per worker in taxes. Meeting representatives of unionised workers this week, President Yoweri Museveni repeated the need to collect more taxes. Well, Mr President, one must first feed the cow to get milk.

The Ugandan government is a bad cattle keeper- not recycling the money gotten from the milk painfully extracted from the bleeding udders of an emaciated workforce in form of healthy hay of state services conducive to personal economic growth. For example, the government currently under fire for allowing successive managers to mismanage NSSF - a pension fund only by name - must do what serious nations do; which is to get every citizen a national ID.

But that is, of course, too much to ask before the next election. Workers, knees shaking with heavy taxes on one end are being starved of their forced savings on the other. Unsurprisingly, they consider taxes and NSSF savings as one and the same.

Now that public anger is rising against the business-as-usual approach to the NSSF scandal, the President - whose office is one of the main beneficiaries of tax-payer spending- must start feeding the cow, not sing lullabies about future reform.

Aside from ensuring that those responsible for the recent misadventures of NSSF are brought to book, Mr Museveni must back workers' calls to unfetter access to savings when workers reach the age of 40 years. Also, workers should be allowed to borrow money against their savings.

One other way of ensuring competent management of workers savings is to liberalise the pension fund sector. Workers should be accorded the right to save their hard-earned money in a manner that will allow them maximum benefits.

source.The Monitor (Uganda)