{UAH} Let’s talk pineapples, not cabinet reshuffle

Let's talk pineapples, not cabinet reshuffle

Written by Ssemujju Ibrahim Nganda

Last Updated: 04 March 2015

There is a pickup truck loaded with pineapples at most junctions in Kampala and Wakiso.

These trucks are also a constant feature near markets and all busy places. Some pineapples are loaded on wheelbarrows and they are doing rounds in the city.   It is pineapple harvest time and as usual, Kayunga, Luweero and Nakasongola, where this fruit is majorly grown, have thrown it in our faces.

A bigger one, I think of about four kilograms, goes for Shs 3,000, approximately one dollar. These fruits are perishable and must be sold within a week. That is why they are sold cheaply.

During his youthful days, my father grew pineapples and it was a nightmare working on this garden. If you are not using protective gear, you will constantly have small wounds on your legs and hands because these fruits have leaves with a very sharp apex. It is, therefore, hard work growing pineapples.

But for 52 years of independence, 30 under President Museveni, this country has not found a solution for her perishable crops. I have in an earlier article written about mangoes rotting in the gardens of Luweero. That is why for me, it is more important for the nation to discuss the rotting pineapples than the appointment of a 91-year-old Philemon Mateke into Museveni's cabinet.

That is how contemptuous our leader has become. The last time I visited Rwanda, almost all offices were full of fresh and energetic graduates, many from Makerere by the way,  of course with a master's degree from Europe.

I asked if the policy in that country was to discriminate against older people. The answer was a big no. The real reason was the targets. These targets will kill an old person, one girl told me.

For us we are a country without targets. If my mother, Hajjat Sophia Nalwoga, was not a determined human being, I had been made to believe that poverty was actually genetic. If you are born to poor parents, you will die poor. The same was said about education. If there is no degree in your family, don't waste your time. So we would be told.

Her target was to educate all her children (she gave birth to 16) and she has never regretted. Kenya, our neighbour, earned $924 million from export of flowers, fruits and vegetables last year. Fruits alone brought in $60m. Rwanda, our small neighbour, is fighting to increase her earnings from horticulture to $300m by 2017. Our total earnings from fruit export is less than a million dollar.

For us our target is for Mzee to begin a fourth decade in power in 2016. And that is where most of our resources are directed. Recently, Dr Michael Lulume Bayigga published a minority report on the budgetary allocations protesting  supplementary expenditure of over Shs 50bn by State House.

The justification for a supplementary expenditure was that ours is not an armchair president. He, therefore, required nearly Shs 24 billion for inland travel. The breakdown was that for every public outreach, the head of state spends Shs 2.4bn. I think you have seen him on the road inaugurating markets and roads. For every visit he makes, we spend Shs 2.4bn!

That is why his total budget for inland travel is now Shs 36bn and vehicle repair is Shs 7bn. When you add fuel, the cost will come to something like Shs 60bn. The total budget for the ministry of lands, housing and urban development is just about Shs 30bn.

The ministry of agriculture demanded Shs 881bn for planting materials to once again kick-start farming; it was allocated just Shs 67bn. There was even a conference on agriculture zoning in State House in 2012, which budgeted for a Shs 1.4 trillion investment in the sector but all that came to nothing!

Agriculture is allocated just 3.3 per cent of the total budget and, as you know, even this little is also abused. What is the result? Rotting pineapples and mangoes! We are almost not adding value to our agricultural products. The juice industry has failed to grow and there are no incentives to grow it.

Luweero is a fruit-growing area but all they grow just rots in the gardens or is sold cheaply in Kampala. For God's sake, we should just be squeezing juice out of these mangoes and pineapples instead of spreading them on the ground.

That is why these days I am less bothered by ministerial appointments. The man thinks cabinet is his business, and not a team to deliver services. That is why he cannot allow his ministers to inaugurate markets and hand out motorcycles.

semugs@yahoo.com

The author is MP for Kyadondo East.

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H.OGWAPITI
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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that  we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic  and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt

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