The British have a saying: “take care of the pennies, the pound will take care of itself.”
In Ugandan speak: “take care of the coins, the bank notes will look after themselves.”
This is the key mantra that foreign-owned telecom companies operating in Uganda – Airtel, MTN, Orange, etc – and now-privatised electricity dealers, especially Umeme, have mastered.
Dealing in rather basic necessities, these companies have captured our psyche by stealing not our bank notes, but our coins every morning, ironically to our delight. In the end, every Ugandan is crying of poverty, except, of course, the innumerable thieves. I am not saying that Ugandans do not take care of coins, literary. Instead, we never mind small-figure monies: the Shs 200s, Shs 500s or even the Shs 1,000s.
That taking care of these pennies provides cushioning for the big notes is the timeless wisdom in that British adage. Part of the problem is that we tend to view our economic condition not as a collective, but as individuals.
We know we are poor because of how little is in our pockets, not how much all of us lack as a collective. Even when we call our friends for credit and find they have nothing to give, we still do not see our poverty as a collective condition. If we did – collectively – the painful reality of how these companies rob us daily – in billions – would hit us hard into revolution.
Interestingly, those who steal from us do not see individuals; they see numbers which, manipulated under a selfish/careless government like ours, accumulate into large sums.
Let me tell a rather familiar story: Just last month, my Yaka (electricity) was running out early in the night. I checked to buy a few units off my phone using the mobile money application (another stealing platform). I had Shs 5,000 on my account, and decided to buy power of Shs 4,000.
Aware that each unit costs Shs 650, I expected to get at least six units. To my horror, the token message read 0.2Kwh! Bonkers, I reached out the Umeme public relations manager, Mr Stephen Ilungole, whose telephone contact I am lucky to have. Ilungole explained that being the beginning of the month, they had deducted Shs 3,360 called ‘service fee,’ and VAT, which is 18 per cent. The remainder was the power I got.
The following day, the good PR also printed and sent me a receipt indicating how the money had been split. Incidentally, the receipt also indicated that a unit cost me Shs 150, not Shs 650! Agitated, I returned with several questions to Ilungole, which he succinctly answered as has been tutored to do.
One key question that disturbed me was what constituted ‘service fee’ (which is outside of VAT), and how they arrived at a monthly charge of Shs 3,360. Ilungole explained that an “independent regulator” who follows an “independent methodology,” determined the charge.
By implication, Umeme only implemented the charge but was not responsible for fixing it. The PR also explained that this fee was a tariff that catered for “fuel, forex and inflation.”
Without taking issue with a foreign investor thinking in dollars in a local economy (exactly, Shs 3,360 has been the average price of a dollar for long), how then did Umeme reach the Shs 650 of a unit of power if fuel was accounted for under service fee? Transformers, cables, conductors, and meters! Really? Attracting a monthly charge as humongous as that!
Anyways, I settled for the maths to put this curtail of thuggery in proper context: conservatively estimating Umeme to have just two million Yaka metres across the country, it takes Shs 6.72 billion from Ugandans every month under the tag ‘service fee’. Since the price of actual power includes investor’s profit, this money is thus bonus income. Annually, Umeme siphons out of Uganda’s economy Shs 80.64 billion as a bonus!
Telecoms: Uganda ranks high among countries with most expensive call rates. Sadly, we celebrate innovations such as Pakalast, Kika, Corporate mega bonus, zone, and whatever, which are nothing but dupes for our collective silliness.
Take, for example, Pakalast, which is by far the most popular. It charges a daily fee of Shs 1,000 for only Airtel to Airtel calls. With a conservative three million subscribers across the country on this package (against a market of 19 million telephone holders according to UCC), the company takes Shs 3 billion from Ugandans every morning.
This is Shs 90 billion a month. Add the empty but expensive internet bundles, across network calls, and unregulated mobile money service, you are as good as hell.
Three billion out of a small economy on a daily basis; you will surely have empty pockets all over the country.
yusufkajura@gmail.com
The author is a PhD fellow at Makerere Institute of Social Research.