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Uganda: Govt Abandons Flood Victims
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The Monitor (Kampala)
OPINION
14 September 2007
Posted to the web 13 September 2007
Miria Obote
The heavy rains in the past three weeks have unleashed floods across Teso, Lango and Acholi regions and wrecked havoc on the properties and lives of thousands of people in those regions. People's homes have been flooded and sometimes washed away just like their food stores.
Food crops in gardens have been inundated by the floods and are rotting away. Roads have been flooded and bridges washed away making movement of people, their livestock and properties impossible. The people are in desperate need of shelter, food, sanitation facilities, medical care, clothing etc.
Instead of rushing to the northern and eastern regions of Uganda devastated by these floods to coordinate governments relief efforts, President Museveni has been in Luweero sounding war drums. The response of the government to the new catastrophe in northern and eastern Uganda has been slow, meagre, uncoordinated and visibly wanting.
Prime Minister Prof. Apolo Nsibambi had an emergency inter-ministerial meeting just on Tuesday and said that the Minister for Disaster Preparedness is in eastern Uganda to assess the magnitude of the disaster after three weeks.
There is no serious effort being made to marshal resources and attend to the basic needs of shelter, clothing, food, sanitation, medical care and transport. The Ministry for Disaster Preparedness has openly stated that it has no resources to attend to these disasters. What is disaster preparedness for? The ministry of works has no plan to attend to, let alone reopen the collapsed road network in the area.
On another matter, Daily Monitor of September 7 reported that Museveni, while addressing people at Dwaniro, Bukomero in Kiboga District, said he would not have allowed UPC who supported Dr Paul Semwogerere in the 1996 elections to be in State House even if he had won.
Mr Museveni said he would have gone to the bush to fight the elected government on the pretext that it was backed by UPC whom he dubbed killers. His utterance against the UPC and his threats of war are not new.
They are part of his politics of violence. It is the same philosophy of violence that led him to Luweero to fight UPC's elected government. It is the same philosophy that has guided his violent hold on power and the pretext of having won elections in 1996, 2001 and 2006.
To answer Museveni's repeated but baseless accusations of murder and human rights violations against UPC and to get in place a rational and peaceful mechanism of reconciling the people of Uganda, UPC has challenged him over the last two years to set up an impartial Truth and Reconciliation Commission to inquire into Uganda's troubled history from October 9, 1962 up to the date the TRC is set up.
President Museveni has avoided this challenge and demand because deep down in his heart he is aware that if the TRC is ever set up, UPC will give evidence against him and those close to him.
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The writer is president of UPC
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