Dear ALL, This time West Nile voted " WISELY " and may be some thing good can come out of this act. As Banduga and Alex have clearly stated, WE NEED TO LOBBY and lobby HARD by DEMANDING OF OUR GOVERNMENT TO DELIVER BECAUSE WE PAY TAXES TOO. Since the begining of plolitical parties in Uganda, the DP and UPC MPs in West Nile have never worked together to solve our problems. We had two hospitals and a brige built for West Nile for our support of UPC but the politics has now changed drastically that we can no longer do LONE WOLVE APPROCH. Our new MPs need to work together as A CAUCUS. ALL the MPs from West Nile should meet regularly to discuss the most important issues which need to be tackled first like the improving the hospitals which were built in the 60s and medication etc. They should make the ruling party MPs as the leaders for the lobbying while the rest make sure the issues are supported in the parliament. The opposition is not there just to say NO to every thing but work together with ruling party MPs to deliver to WN. The completion of a project will be considered as a success for ALL the MPs from WN regardless of party afflliations! Let the new breed of MPs try a new work together approch this time to let the Uganda Gov. know that the WN MPs are working together as a lobbying group. May be it will be difficult to say NO to us this time. Congradulations to all the new MPs and hope they will succeed where most of their predecessors failed us, the people of West Nile. Thanks. Adiga Godi. --- On Sun, 3/13/11, banduga ismail <[email protected]> wrote:
From: banduga ismail <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [WestNileNet] Ministry for West Nile? To: "A Virtual Network for friends of West Nile" <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, March 13, 2011, 7:43 AM Alex, Thank you for this piece. You are right on the spot. Indeed we must get services just like any other part of Uganda and we must demand for these services. Service delivery is financed by the revenue realized from taxes that we pay, just like people in other regions do, nothing else. The tendency in Uganda in the last 25 years has been using service delivery as a political catapult - if a region votes according their wish and this wish is not in favour of the incumbency, services are denied for such a region. Regions that purportly vote "wisely"(what this means, your guess as good as mine) are rewarded with improved services. Quit strange and perculia to Uganda in the last 25 years. To me these unfoldings tell me more than our eyes can see and ears can hear. The people of karamoja, who are Ugandans are dying, eating hides and skins in the eyes of their own government. A good government does not have to wait for the next election and see the karamojong will vote before they can served from death. A good government attaches value to life, not for votes but because it human life that pays the taxes that the governments mismanage. If you want half of your pupolation to die because of hunger, proverty and disease, doesn't it ocur to you that you are reducing your tax base and free space to mismanage. From: alex free <[email protected]> To: A Virtual Network for friends of West Nile <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, 13 March, 2011 8:04:44 Subject: [WestNileNet] Ministry for West Nile? I just got curious to read some link some colleagues have sent suggesting that we could lobby for a "Ministry of West Nile" affairs to address our needs! It could be good, BUT...Well, according to me, West Nile doesn't need a ministry. First of all, such a ministry would provide an unnecessary avenue for the people in charge to "eat" free money without doing anything. After all, the main cry in the villages is for medicine in the hospitals and health facilities, clean water; poor standards in schools, inaccessibility of quality education for majority of the folks, etc. Secondly, it wouldn't directly benefit West Nilers because a ministry is a government property so you could still get somebody from Bundibugyo to head the "ministry for for West Nile affairs" and the secretary from Busia. For me, the critical issue, as a good measuring yard-stick, is to rather ask: have the special ministries for Luwero and Karamoja yielded tangible results to those areas to the effect that they are now doing better? A few weeks back I saw a terrifying and a shameful picture in one of the newspapers where a Karamojong family-both mother and children eating a dry hide (cow skin) because of hunger! Sometime back in the 90s a woman Victoria Ssekitoleko was accused of having eaten huge sums of money meant for building valley dams for Karamoja...etc. All these are indicators that a special ministry (in the current Ugandan setting) is a white elephant for the target group. As all are all too aware, Uganda already has loads of problems of an unwantedly huge public administration and administrative costs (districts, RDCs, myriads of presidential advisors, of course our CORRUPTION, etc). Do we need to create more avenues for people to mint money from where they don't deserve it? The tax-collector in Uganda, according to me, has been over-exploited to their bones! I would rather suggest and insist that, without a special ministry, we demand for ELECTRICITY (we shall miss MP Arumadri, our voice on that...read SundayVision,13th March, titled: "Faces we shall miss in Ninth Parliament"), BETTER ROADS, UNIVERSITIES, well-equipped HOSPITALS, CLEAN WATER, FACTORIES, JOBS-e.g. through limestone mining in Moyo area, then cement factory, etc. Why do I say that we have to demand? because we pay taxes. If we pay taxes, it means we expect benefits-services out of the taxes. Therefore we deserve equal treatment and justice just like people of Kampala, Tororo, Kasese, Mbarara, etc, who have many of those good ammenities which we lack. Just like former MP Arumadri also said, we shouldn't be allowed to feel as though we were part of DR Congo. We are Ugandans. We pay taxes in Uganda and we need services from the government of Uganda that we support. In addition, I would also want to say that we need not fear to ask for what is our due. If we didn't pay taxes, if we belonged to Congo or Sudan, then it would be right to deny us of services in Uganda. Lastly, a schoolmate of mine (from Rwanda) was shocked to hear when I told him that the entire region of West Nile doesn't have electricity yet Uganda sells electricity to its neighbors apart from DR Congo and Sudan! I greet you all ans wish you all the best! -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ WestNileNet mailing list [email protected] http://orion.kym.net/mailman/listinfo/westnilenet WestNileNet is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ All Archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. _______________________________________________
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