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Uganda: Dancing With Underemployment
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The Monitor (Kampala)
COLUMN
9 May 2008
Posted to the web 9 May 2008
Angelo Izama
Kampala
Somewhere in the Uganda Police Force is a highly trained homicide investigator who, word has, it is working at the police gas station.
His bosses say that expensive skills, for which he had been sent abroad to study with the best, cannot be employed here. Consequently he is working literally as a pump attendant.
This is a true story and not the only one. Worse than the grim figures of unemployment is a truly depressing picture of underemployment.
Most people have heard the very Ugandan phrase that so and so is not "doing what they studied".
Try calculating the loss to the country if only tasks were accomplished by the many professionals who have had to trade in their costly acquired skills for a job so as to put food on the table.
This massive squander of the human capital of a country is an important testament to the type of government that Uganda has and one which it so badly deserves.
It sets out the challenges for the next administration where the current one has failed.
In a world where the fastest growing economies are knowledge-driven ones, the underutilisation of Ugandan talent is the best showcase of how unserious the government is and why delays in changing it are a nightmare best avoided.
It is a challenge beyond politics [for there are no real guarantees that change at State House may usher a golden age]
What is clear though is that the present political talent pool falls far short of what is required because it is the architect of the present morass and reflects the worst shortcomings of underemployment in its running of state affairs.
In his heyday as teacher/soldier when part of his itinerary was a chalk and blackboard routine of lectures about Uganda's future, President Yoweri Museveni used the phrase that the country was like a sick person recovering enough to be able to " drink soup" under his regime.
If drinking life-restoring soup in the context of the country's economy means unleashing its human talent to uplift it, then Mr Museveni's Uganda has been trying to drink soup with a fork. Such is what underemployment means.
It also means massive waste. The Presidency is a good place to start.
At the last count President Museveni employed an army of 109 Presidential advisors at a cost of 13 billion (for the five- year term in wages alone).
It emerged that most of these so-called advisors often with glowing curriculum vitae do not actually advise the President let alone see him and if they do (according to his principal private secretary Ms Amelia Kyambadde) have to offer a bribe literally in an attempt to do their job.
They are underemployed. One must make the assumption that the over 50 billion shillings Ugandans spend on the imperial-sized Presidency has very little return and worse it is money misspent.
The size is not matched by efficiency yet it is the products of efficiency that drive an economy and maintain high standards in a society.
The South Africa department of trade has 13 people compared to the 300 man behemoth in Uganda. The difference in efficiency measured by productivity puts Uganda to shame.
The minister in charge of labour, Mwesigwa Rukutana by his own admission hardly comes to the office because there is hardly anything to do. Perhaps Mr Rukutana best dramatises the situation in the rest of the bloated government whose huge cost (declared consistently unsustainable by government experts) does not return value for money but most of all sucks up an important resource: the human capital of the country.
According to Mr Rukutana the annual budget for his ministry is Ushs 30 million most of which he spends organising the May 1 national Labour Day "festivities". The rest of the time he really just hangs around.
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But Mr Rukutana, is a wealthy landlord and drives a fuel guzzling Hummer, a car that costs over 100 million shillings not taking into account the fuel money (its cost and maintenance alone can pay for Rukutana's labour department for a whole presidential term at its current budget).
Perhaps Rukutana is better off as a businessman certainly not Minister for Labour.
In this respect paying him a salary, medical costs, a government car and guard, let alone the cost of utilities like power, his daily newspaper and office supplies is a waste.
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