CHOGM-Uganda 2007 >> Facts & Articles
>> Saturday, November 10, 2007
A huge amount of resources have been spent preparing for the three-day CHOGM meeting, none of which improves the lot of those who are so desperately poor and dying in Uganda.
"The streets of Kampala are clean!" A Kampala resident told an expatriate Ugandan over the phone recently. Beggars and the usual elements of unsightliness of the Kampala landscape have reportedly been removed in an effort to CHOGM-ize the city.
Picture source: www.ugpulse.com
CHOGM Perspectives: Facts & Articles
Human Rights Activists Prepare for Commonwealth Peoples Forum
"As the 2007 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kampala approaches (November), the attention of the Commonwealth should turn to the massive human rights violations that are being perpetrated in Uganda by police and security forces. The Ugandan Government is not simply directing the police to clamp down on criminal and terrorist activities. It is using the military and police force to bolster its own regime." Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative
“As host of the Commonwealth summit, Uganda should demonstrate its commitment to the Commonwealth values of human rights and the rule of law by ensuring its soldiers respect human rights during operations in Karamoja,” (Human Rights Watch)
Interview with Secretary General Don McKinnon, Modern Vision of the Commonwealth
Museveni to Chair Pre-Conference Civil Society Forum
CHOGM EXPENDITURE
Monitor Columnist Muniini K. Mulera on CHOGM & Govt. Spending
"A government happily spends tens of millions of dollars to host an international conference like the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) while 92% of its capital city’s residents have no toilet facilities.
The same government, on a pre-Chogm spending-spree, imports luxury cars and all manner of gadgets, then begs the international community to help it cope with floods that have further impoverished its poor citizens.
The state, already spending more money on running the presidential palaces and the presidency than it spends on its national health services, pours $100 million into renovating and expanding the old colonial governor’s residence, cynically known as the State House.
Meanwhile school children study in condemned buildings, millions lack life-saving anti-malaria bed-nets, patients seek treatment in severely under-equipped hospitals, police and military personnel live in shacks, cultural activities are starved of cash, and the country’s oldest and largest university is on the brink of bankruptcy."
Kampala is spruced up today, but there'll be a price to pay
Story by ASUMAN BISIIKA
(Daily Nation, 11/23/2007)
TWO ISSUES HAVE BEEN THE subject of debate in Kampala for the last two weeks: the feverish preparations for hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, and the perennial difference in opinion between the Central Government and the Buganda Kingdom on land management and tenure issues.
Although CHOGM has sort of clouded it, the land issue is such a compelling subject that it will have to take centre-stage after CHOGM has come and gone; and left us a new-look Kampala city.
For foreigners who have not been to Kampala for a relatively long time, the temptation to think that this is a new city altogether will be high. The green belts have been recovered from the tenancy of waste heaps, while the walkways along roads have been reclaimed from the dust-filled and unpaved road shoulders.
For those who follow trends in the region, Kampala is now the city of the moment. The traffic lights work (Kampala was hitherto the city with the fewest working traffic lights in the region), and the street lights now work (again Kampala had the highest number of non-working street lights).
INITIALLY, THE LONGEST STRETCH of street-lit road in the region was said to be in Kigali, which also takes the beef for the city with least pot-holes. Nairobi comes second. But these two cities will have to contend with a new-found Kampala, courtesy of preparations for CHOGM.
The pot-holes have been smoothed over and some roundabout junctions have been transformed into cross-section formats for easy flow and control of traffic. Buildings have been spruced up with new coats of paint.
And normal greetings have been prolonged to accommodate an interrogative statement: Are you ready for CHOGM? It is a complete makeover of a city that is only known to us as the ghost town with no roads. It has become something akin to the reclamation of an old city.
The only problem is the cost of giving the city its new life. Take this: A minister who has had a heart problem is rushed to Mulago Hospital. Unfortunately, there are no doctors to attend to him.
His colleague, a Member of Parliament, calls the doctors who were supposed to be on duty. One of them comes after two hours, only to declare that there are no drugs for the minister’s condition.
The minister’s colleague rushes to a drug shop (not a pharmacy, please!) about two kilometres from Mulago Hospital to buy the drugs. When he returns to the hospital, the minister’s condition has deteriorated to un-recoverable levels. He dies an hour later.
And the poor minister ‘‘took leave of his shield’’ (as the Bakonzo of Western Uganda would say) just like that; Kyenyegi.
Question: How can a country that claims not to have enough money to buy medicine for its national referral hospital spend more than Sh500 billion just for the prestige of hosting CHOGM?
Yet CHOGM was a necessary evil for the government. Since the elections in February 2006, the hosting of CHOGM has been the rallying point for government mobilisation and diversion from some critical issues of public interest.
Dr Kizza Besigye, Uganda’s main opposition leader, had to be persuaded to stay away from the streets to allow for a smooth CHOGM. He traded his departure for bail for his co-accused in a treason case. Although the bail offer for his co-accused came with very stringent conditions, it was welcome reprieve for the government and for Dr Besigye too.
What the government did was to over-hype CHOGM and make it look like it would benefit all Ugandans directly. With that in mind, the population was reluctant to listen to opposition leaders who were initially opposed to it. And that gave President Museveni a one-year lease from the people who looked forward to the goodies expected from CHOGM.
While the monetary cost of hosting CHOGM has been put at over USh500 billion, the real cost will definitely be known after the visitors have gone and left us grappling with the challenges of budgetary deficits that will negatively impact on social services provision.
THE GOVERNMENT HAS ACTED LIKE the proverbial butterfly who threw himself into the fire after failing to get something to cook for his mother-in-law.
The story, as narrated by my dear mother goes thus: There was famine in the land. And Mr Butterfly was the most hit by the famine because of his laziness. As would be expected, he had accumulated debts and was not creditworthy any more.
Now, one day, his mother-in-law came calling. Since Mr Butterfly was not creditworthy, he could not borrow from anywhere. As confusion whipped him into a rage blaming his mother-in-law for not informing him before the visit, he jumped around. He accidentally ended up throwing himself into the fire.
Just you wait; there will be post-CHOGM blues.
Mr Bisiika is a freelance journalist working in Kampala.
Write to the author
Steps Away From CHOGM
but out of reach of its benefits, slum life marches on
By Chris Mason
We stood in an open expanse of dirt mounds, layered with garbage and feces of the human and animal variety, watching the convoy scream its way through the street, delivering its cargo of cars that are to be used during next month's meeting of Commonwealth heads of government (known as CHOGM) to be held here.
I had come to visit one of Kampala's many slums, with a photographer and two local aid workers, one of whom grew up in this particular slum, to learn more about life in this ramshackle neighbourhood that thousands of people drive past every day.
It sits on the western edge of Kampala, visible to anyone heading to or from the airport in Entebbe. In fact, besides being used as a route for the delivery of all the luxury goods arriving in this country as it prepares for CHOGM, the road itself has been completely re-done twice (because contractors used poor asphalt the first time) since I arrived here three months ago. All so that it visiting dignitaries will have smooth sailing when the fly into town for three days in November.
Politicians here have said time-and-time again that CHOGM will benefit all Ugandans. That cutting every single government budget (including health, education, etc.) by five per cent to help pay the costs of preparing the conference would be worthwhile; that freezing a campaign to bring electricity to rural Ugandans to help pay for a boost in power here in Kampala to lessen the chance of brown-outs during CHOGM will, in the long run, benefit Ugandans.
The claims were difficult to believe, but rolling your eyes at the statements is easy to do when you're listening to them come from politicians during one-on-one interviews or from the comfortable seat in a press conference theatre.
So we set out to put these statements to the test. The Katwe slum is about the closest that CHOGM preparations come to the lives of Kampala's most disadvantaged residents. The slum sits alongside this road to the airport, and as if to drive the point home, the truck carrying the luxury cars blew past us just as we were about to cross the train tracks and descend into the slum.
We were reminded of the reputation this slum has within minutes of crossing the tracks. We first met some young kids, none older than 11, carrying large and heavy burlap sacks full of scrap metal and plastic.
This is how the kids, long dropped out of school, make a living. It is also a source of some of the insecurity people complain about, as they say these kids break into houses to steal anything "from pots and pans to plastic jugs” that could be sold as scrap material.
After leaving the kids and speaking briefly with a man who lived in a tiny mud building crammed between the railway tracks and a dark, pungent drainage ditch, we were approached by a group of men demanding to know who we were.
They spoke with my colleagues in Luganda, so I spent most of the conversation trying to pick up whatever words I recognized. From what I could discern, they claimed to be security officials of some sort and wanted to know what we were doing there.
Though strong and fit, their clothing was disheveled and dirty. One of the four wore mismatched plastic sandals. As the conversation continued, their demeanour softened and we all introduced ourselves.
It turns out they were undercover detectives who had been following us since we'd entered the slum. They stopped us to warn us and make sure we knew the safety threats that existed in the slums. We told them that yes, we knew about the problems. They shrugged, advised us to hide our valuables and warned that it was unlikely anyone in the slum would come to our assistance if we were accosted. Then they walked back to the shade where they sat, watching those who came and went.
We walked through the narrow, dirt paths that separated the collection of one-room homes. Some were made of concrete and mud brick. Others were made from mud that had been mixed with straw to fortify it. We crossed over drainage ditches, stepped around human feces and attracted a small group of children who followed us through the slum.
Our first stop was the local councilor who is in charge of the slum. We spoke with him in his cramped, windowless office, also made from mud. He was interesting to speak with, but I was surprised when he told us he'd never actually been down to the worst part of the slum, called Cambodia, where we were interested in spending most of our time. The area was populated with street people who had taken to living in ramshackle shacks and one family even living in the tarped-over shell of a car.
Some had been living there as many as five years but they still aren't welcome as far as the rest of the slum's residents are concerned.
"They come in here and steal anything from our homes that they think they can sell as scrap metal," the councilor told us.
This detachment was confirmed later on when we were speaking with a young man who had moved off the streets and into this tiny mud home (rent is 10,000 shillings a month, or about $6). We asked whether anyone from the community helps these people who live beside the train tracks.
"The only time they come to us is when they help us bury our dead," the man told us.
After leaving the councilor's office (we also asked whether he thinks the area residents will benefit at all from CHOGM. He answered in saying the plans to organize protests along the nearby road that most of the delegates will be using to reach Kampala from the airport), we walked through the collection of shacks and stopped at a group of boys and young men who were sitting in the shade.
They were gathered around a community water tap. A businessman had installed the tap, and charged residents 50 shillings (about 8 cents) to fill a jerry can. These boys and young men were in charge of accepting payment from those who came for water.
We had been told that one of the slum's problems (common in many places here) is idle youth who have no prospect for education or employment. Beyond the lack of hope, idle hands often find a way of getting into trouble.
But these guys were great. We spoke with them for 15 minutes or so (though one immediately elected himself as the group's spokesperson to try to keep things orderly), about the challenges they face in the slum, and also about CHOGM.
They talked about being arrested merely for standing around in public areas. I asked (through a translator) everyone in the group who had been arrested to raise their hand. Every single hand in the group, about 15, shot up. The main guy smiled as he raised his hand, as though it was a silly notion to think that any of them may have escaped arrest.
We continued on, weaving our way between buildings and shacks, and eventually out the back end of the neighbourhood, where we into an open, grassy area that was criss-crossed by a putrid and foul-smelling river that drained into a larger, and more putrid, river.
We crossed the small river several times, each time by balancing across a narrow, rotting piece of wood. Eventually we came full-circle back to the train tracks where we had started. We wanted to return to the young man we'd spoken with first, and so made our way in that direction.
At the end of a mud-brick wall, the path turned left and we could see the young man across the drainage ditch, hanging his laundry. But first we were stopped by a family we met at the end of that mud-brick wall.
The wife sat in the grass. Her husband lay on a sheet, shaking and with his eyes closed. Their young son sat on the other side of the husband, all cramped into a small sliver of shade.
We knelt down and spoke with the wife. Every now and then the husband opened his eyes and muttered a few words in response to our questions, but otherwise he lay in silence, as his arms, legs and lips went into periodic spasms.
The husband had fallen ill two weeks ago and had gotten steadily worse. The family could not afford to go to the doctor, and so they spent the days sitting in the shade, hoping that maybe tomorrow he will begin feeling better.
We asked how they'd managed to scrape together money here in the city. This was one of the few times the husband opened his eyes and, in hardly a whisper, he said he was the only one in the family who could work. The wife cast her eyes down at the ground. I wondered whether she may have been thinking about life without her husband, who gave no reason to believe he'd regain his health.
They had, like many in this corner of the slum, come to Kampala from other parts of the country in the hopes of making more money than they could in their village in the eastern region of Uganda.
There they had land, but much of rural Uganda does not function on much of a cash economy, so many flock to the city or larger towns in the hopes of a paying job.
Few succeed, and this family's experience was no different. They had been in Kampala about a year, and desperately wanted to go back to the village. Here they lived in a mud shack a few metres away from the train tracks, with no access to a toilet and few job prospects. The husband found the odd job carrying things for businessmen, but otherwise they found few opportunities in the city.
We eventually said our good-byes and continued on our way for our final interview, with the young man named Godfrey who we had spoken with earlier.
Taking a break from hanging laundry, he crouched down and entered his home, coming out with a bench that he sat in the dirt. The small bench was as wide as the path, separating the train tracks from the drainage ditch, on which his home was built.
He took one of his shirts off the line, using it to wipe down the bench and gestured for us to sit. We were his guests, and he wished to make us as comfortable as possible.
We sat under the scorching sun and spoke with him for 20 or so minutes, about his life and about life here in the slum.
"Some people pass here and think we're all mad. But when we walk up on the train tracks, do we not walk just like everybody else?" he said. "We are the same as all those people who live in the big houses. I mean, we're all just human beings, right?"
He told us about leaving his village two years ago, to come to Kampala where he thought opportunity awaited. Unfortunately, it did not. And he spent a year living on the streets before he managed to scrape together some money to get this one-room mud house, perhaps the size of a small walk-in closet, where he lived with his wife.
We asked whether he knew what CHOGM is. He then went into a very detailed description of the meeting, explaining how the heads of state from all the Commonwealth countries would be visiting Uganda in November.
We then asked whether he thought the thousands of people living here in Katwe would benefit at all from the meeting, and all the money being spent to prepare for the meeting.
"I hear the Queen is coming to see the condition of the Ugandan people, but I don't know that she'll see the conditions of the people here," he said. "Maybe we should ask her to use the train, because then she'd see our lives here."
He said that last bit with a smile, and sheepish laugh, as he pointed up to the train tracks that were barely more than an arms-length away from his home.
How many times a day do trains pass by here, I asked.
"Four, five times a day but sometimes it's too many to count," he said.
We talked a bit more about health and education.
"In this area people are dying so much from strange diseases we don't understand," Godfrey said. Over his shoulder I could see the man we met earlier, still lying in the shade, shaking.
On education, he said he hopes to go back to school. He dropped out in grade five, but still hopes to go back and finish.
And with that, we said our good-byes. As we shook hands, Godfrey spoke to me in Luganda. I picked up enough words to understand what he was saying and answered using a few simple words I've become comfortable with. He laughed. "You're learning Luganda?"
I'm trying, I told him.
We climbed back up the steep embankment to the train tracks to begin our walk back to the main road. Standing on top of the elevated tracks, one could look to the left and see the slum in all its rusted, dilapidated glory. Looking to the right, in the direction we were walking, a panorama of downtown Kampala, with its gleaming office buildings and recently paved roads, stared back at us. Our backs turned to Katwe, we were looking at the only slice of Kampala that CHOGM delegates will see in November.
http://www.jhr.ca/fieldnotes/view.php?aid=826
Picture source: BBC NEWS
New Tactics Applied to Explain Delays
The Monitor (Kampala)ANALYSIS
18 October 2007
Posted to the web 18 October 2007
By Christopher Mason and Grace Natabaalo
Kampala
UGANDANS have for months been greeted with massive billboards proclaiming the country's readiness for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting due in Kampala on November 23.
But a month before the opening of the meeting, organizers have begun using a subtly different approach in discussing Chogm preparations - one that suggests that, despite months of insisting all preparations will be ready for November, it may be acceptable if a few loose ends remain when the heads of state arrive.
Chogm is not about November. Chogm is about the start of a transformation," said James Mugume, permanent secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at a press briefing Tuesday.
Mr Mugume and Chogm Spokesman Kagole Kivumbi said Chogm was an opportunity for Uganda to upgrade its infrastructure, adding that the meeting itself was not necessarily the end point by which all work had to be completed.
Asked about the star classification system being implemented at area hotels, and whether all hotels would be graded in time for Chogm, Mr Mugume said the newly built hotels would not be classified in time for Chogm.
A rating system (with five stars being the best classification) was previously identified as a way for foreign Chogm delegates to judge the quality of various hotels.
"In my view Chogm is the beginning, not the end," Mr Mugume said.
During a separate briefing in August, Minister of State for Tourism Serapio Rukundo said hotels currently under construction would be classified on speculation.
But Mr Rukundo, nor any official at Tuesday's briefing, explained how such a system would help assure fair pricing for foreign delegates who booked hotel space in advance of Chogm.
During Tuesday's press briefing, Mr Kivumbi encouraged the press to focus on what will come out of the meetings, and not on the preparations. This, follows months of weekly press briefings dedicated to discussing the state of preparedness on such topics as road infrastructure, the tourism industry, hotels and meeting venues.
The change in tact by Chogm officials suggests a growing admission among organizers that some provisions such as beautification projects, some road works and other infrastructure works may not be completed in time for Chogm, despite assurances that work would be finished and a major increase in the Chogm budget.
In August, Parliament approved a revised Chogm budget that more than doubled the amount of money allotted for spending in the current financial year. In all, Shs153 billion has been ear-marked for Chogm spending this year.
Government slashed all other ministerial budgets to fund the increase. Earlier this year, Mrs Florence Mugasha, the Commonwealth Secretariat's Deputy Secretary General, put Uganda's Chogm readiness at 75 per cent.
During an early September visit, she refused to update that state of readiness, saying instead that percentages were not important.
Of late, however, talks of percentages and preparations have been sidelined in favour of a focus on the topics to be discussed during Chogm meetings.
In line with the change in approach, organisers now stress the role Chogm has played in jump-starting infrastructure works that will greatly improve life for those in the Kampala and Entebbe regions, as well as make the area more attractive to visitors. This is consistent with the government's attempt to use Chogm to boost awareness of Uganda's attractions in the hopes of reversing a downward trend in recent tourism numbers.
Roads Money Diverted to Chogm
The East African (Nairobi)
NEWS4 September 2007
Posted to the web 4 September 2007
By David Malingha Doya
Nairobi
Billions of shillings earmarked for maintenance of rural roads in Uganda have been diverted to expenditures related to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) to be held in November.
This means that over 2,000 km of roads upcountry, of which over 20 per cent is in poor condition and whose maintenance awaits money from the Treasury, will deteriorate further if the government does not fill the funding gap in the course of the year.
The decision follows a request by Finance Minister Dr Ezra Suruma that parliament allow the government to incur "emergency" expenditure of Ush153 billion ($90m) on CHOGM activities by cutting the budgets of all ministries for financial year 2007/2008. Parliament was also informed that government would be footing the whole CHOGM budget without any financial assistance from the Commonwealth Secretariat.
It has, however, emerged that parliament put the whole burden of funding the "emergency" expenditure on the Ministries of Works and Transport and Foreign Affairs, a decision whose effects are expected to be felt outside the city in bad roads and cash-strapped missions abroad.
Out of about Ush150 billion ($88.2 million) that was proposed for road maintenance and repairs under that ministry this year, Ush45 billion ($26.4 million), just under one-third of the national road-maintenance budget, has been allocated to fund road contracts under CHOGM alone.
Secondly, parliament has authorised the government to use another Ush14 billion ($8.2 million) from the same ministry for redeveloping State House, which is listed among the possible accommodation options for Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, co-chair of the summit, during her stay in Uganda.
Originally, Dr Suruma had earmarked only Ush55 billion ($32.3 million) for CHOGM activities under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in this financial year's budget proposals, which are currently before Parliament. However, parliament now wants the ministry to spend a total of Ush94 billion ($55.2 million) on the CHOGM budget alone.
Parliamentary Budget Committee chairman William Oketcho said, "It is important to appreciate that the funds are of an emergency nature and arise from the fact the Ush55 billion that was provided for under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not take into account the full requirements for the activities."
Mr Oketcho added that the balances on the budget from the previous financial year, which are yet to be presented to parliament later this month, could be used to compensate for the Ush45 billion ($26.4 million) that was meant for road repairs upcountry. The budget committee also recommended that funds extended to private hotels be made recoverable, since the money will be taken from the resource envelope.
However, the concentrating of ministry budgets on CHOGM activities could have far-reaching implications for social services such as roads this year, said legislators who did not assent to the decision, which they say was "hurriedly" made.
Patrick Amuriat, the shadow minister for works and transport, said, "Over 2,000km of road are going to suffer this year because money that could have been used to repair and maintain them, is going to be used for CHOGM roads alone. Our missions abroad are also going to continue suffering because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs budget has also been severely affected."
This appears to be a blow to Dr Suruma's own budget priorities for this financial year, which, according to his budget speech, include development and maintenance of transport infrastructure, with the target of maintaining roads in every constituency in the country.
The budget speech also revealed that there is a huge backlog of road maintenance, with over 20 per cent of roads being in "poor or bad condition" while 60 per cent are in "warning condition." Dr Suruma had allocated Ush35 billion ($20.5 million) to clear the backlog of road maintenance.
Mr Amuriat told The EastAfrican that the opposition would rather have had a portion of each ministry's budget cut, a suggestion that was originally fronted by Dr Suruma in his request, but was reportedly turned down in closed door meetings of the budget committee.
Before this however, the debate about authorising government to spend more money on CHOGM activities was focused on the details of the budget that Dr Suruma presented, amounting to about Ush162 billion ($95.2 million) and its "emergency" nature, rather than on where the money should come from.
Indeed, Dr Suruma's budget was cut from Ush162 billion to Ush153 ($90 million) in the NRM parliamentary caucus presentation to the House by scrapping or reducing amounts attached to "unclear costs."
For example, Ush300 million ($176,000) that had been allocated for a State House visit by the Queen, Ush77 million ($45,000) for the Ministry of Water and Environment, and Ush31 million ($18,000) for Uganda Martyrs Shrine were scrapped, while another Ush465 million ($273,000) for spouses of heads of state was cut to Ush299 million ($175,000), Ush4.5 billion ($2.6 million) for beautification was cut to Ush2.7 billion ($1.58 million) and Ush7 billion ($4.1 million) for media and publicity was cut toUsh5.6 billion ($3.3 million).
Legislators said that some costs were "unclear" and suggested there were "double allocations" such as the money allocated for the Ministry of Water and Transport when the National Water and Sewerage Corporation had been allocated Ush1.3 billion ($764,000).
Prof Ogenga Latigo, leader of the opposition, said, "We were debating figures but the budget committee went and did the wrong assignment. What they did should have gone to the legal and constitutional committee." The other question that was raised in the earlier debate was the "emergency" nature of the request for funds.
Deputy Attorney General Freddie Ruhindi said that the request to spend on CHOGM activities as an emergency was comparable to a request to release funds abruptly to contain the foot and month disease that broke out last year.
However, Nandala Mafabi, the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of parliament, said the government had known that it would host the meeting for four years now and therefore had no excuse for cornering parliament into authorising such huge sums of money to be spent in the two months ahead of CHOGM.
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