The outbreak of Coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan, Hubei Province in China towards the end of last year has caused a global financial crisis. Thousands have lost jobs, companies have lost revenue, and governments all over the world are grappling with the harsh reality of drawing supplementary budgets to fight the deadly virus.
Today, Parliament is expected to pass the motion that allows government to borrow Shs700 million from China’s Exim bank to fund the Coronavirus budget. Last week, Minister of Health Dr Jane Ruth Aceng revealed that in the period of 10 weeks, they had spent over Shs112 billion to safeguard the country from coronavirus, mostly spending it on sensitization and surveillance.
With the government looking for ways of funding the fight against the pandemic, Nakaseke Member of Parliament Paulson Lutamaguzi Semakula offered to have Shs2 million deducted from his salary monthly, and asked fellow MPs to follow suit.
Although some people have come out to say that it is too little, it could be a whole lot if all the 426 MPs allow Shs2 million to be deducted monthly from their salaries. Don’t do the math, we did that for you and came up with Shs852 million.
If the deductions extend to other public servants that earn more than Shs15 million monthly like Cabinet Ministers, we would have more than a billion shillings monthly towards the Coronavirus pandemic fight; that is if mafias don’t hijack it along the way.
The outbreak has strained the budget tremendously, with Minister for Public Service Muruli Mukasa announcing last week that public servants will not have a salary increment in the next financial year, due to these kinds of emergencies.
Government expenditure ought to be cut tremendously to support the economy whose progress has been already distorted by the outbreak. Surely, Shs2m is just peanuts to MPs and Ministers.