By KT Reporter
The civil society has joined Former Finance Minister and Presidential Advisor, Dr Ezra Suruma to advocate for part of anticipated oil revenues to be used for social protection.
Currently, with express support from President Yoweri Museveni, laws and policies about the oil and gas sector have ring-fenced the revenues strictly for infrastructure development, as opposed to funding any consumptive needs of the country.
In this way, the government argues that it will best safeguard the resource for the benefit of the prosperity of the existing and future generations of Uganda.
However, Dr Suruma, a renowned economist and former Makerere University Vice Chancellor, says it would make no sense to build all the infrastructure where there are people in the country who are going hungry.
He also proposes that if the decision is too big for the government to make, the constitution provides for a referendum on such matters.
Uganda currently has about 6.5 billion barrels of confirmed oil deposits with 1.7 billion recoverable, while ongoing explorations are expected to add to this.
According to the oil and gas production sharing agreements between the government and oil and gas companies, the government of Uganda could get between 60 and 80 percent of the residual revenues (after recoverable expenses), which Dr Suruma puts at between 3.1 and 4.7 billion dollars annually.
This excludes other revenues like taxes and royalties, which are all from the Oil Fund. He says at least half of these revenues should go towards the country’s social protection and do best to make the resource a blessing, not a curse.
He was speaking at the public conference in Kampala on Social Protection for Older Persons under the theme: Towards Universal Coverage: Social Protection as a Right for All Older Persons, organized by the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER) and Research and Action for Income Security (RAISE).
The conference was aimed at engaging government, civil society, political leaders and elderly persons’ rights defenders to discuss the existing challenges and strategies to ensure accelerated action towards universal social protection coverage.
Some of the challenges include underfunding and exclusion through the limited age bracket as well as documentation.
Angela Kasule Nabwowe, the ISER Executive Director, says the funding can be stepped up from the current 25,000 shillings per month not only through progressive taxation and curbing corruption but also money from oil revenues.
Kasule also calls for laws that make social protection a right, not a privilege, condemning the cuts in the budgetary allocations for elderly person programmes at a time when the number is increasing.
On the policies on the elderly, Kasule says many elderly persons are excluded because the flagship social protection programmes, particularly the Social Assistance Grant for the Empowerment (SAGE), target persons 80 years and above, yet the constitution provides for 60 years and above.
The SAGE programme started almost 10 years ago as a pilot project targeting a few districts before it was rolled out to cover the country.
However, this meant that the government had to look for more resources especially when the government of Ireland withdrew, or find a way of limiting the numbers, hence the decision to raise the minimum age to 80.
Peggy Waaki, a parliament representative of elderly persons, says this was the only viable option if the programme was going to cover the whole country, because, she says, it was unfair for people in one district to benefit, while those in a neighbouring district were not.
She now asks the government to quickly work on the issue of registrations, errors in identification and ages among others.
The Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development acknowledges that the programme is facing serious challenges, but that they can be handled.
Bernard Mujuni, the Commissioner for Equity and Rights at the Ministry says the current policies and institutions like the judiciary, police, Equal Opportunities Commission, and the Uganda Human Rights Commission, among others, have not adequately protected the elderly and other vulnerable persons.
He calls for a law that will specifically take care of this, reasoning that without a law, the program could be vulnerable in case of government changing.
Dvinia Esther Anyakun, the State Minister for Labour, Employment and Industrial Relations admitted that currently, with the SAGE Programme catering for just 360,000 persons, which is just more than 10 percent of the elderly persons in the country, it is too limited.
According to her, the little money is catering for the most vulnerable to get basic needs like food and health care.
However, she says, it would be dangerous to increase the coverage in the policy by widening the age bracket of the beneficiaries, when there are no guaranteed sources of funding for the programme-URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
