The main reason is that Uganda spends on average about $70 million (about Shs 259 billion) every year treating VIPs abroad. This $70 million is what government will save for the next six years and use it to buy the Lubowa hospital from the investor. Every financial year, $70 million will be included in the budget of Ministry of Health and passed on to the investor. This is wonderful economics, according to Muhakanizi. Why? Because government won’t have to spend the whole sum of $379 million in one go.
In Luganda this is what they call okwekaza, lying with a straight face. There are lots of questions anyone sensible will have to ask. If this is a wonderful health project, why is it not driven by managers of our health sector?
Are the managers of our health sector so incompetent to explain this project which is the reason ‘professor’ Muhakanizi has been procured? Maybe they are tacticfully sidelined. Maybe the Lubowa hospital has nothing to do with the country’s health sector.
This Lubowa hospital, we are told, will be completed in two years, which I highly doubt. Ministry of Finance argued in their advert that this whole facility will be fully owned by Uganda government after eight years. In other words, we have by issuance of promissory notes helped the investor to borrow money at 6% interest to build the facility.
We begin giving her $70 million next year, so she can repay the loan. Actually, we are the ones who will service the loan. And in a period of six years, she will have made a profit of over $100 million because the hospital will cost just about $250 million.Â
Let me at this stage help you understand why ministry of Health is sidelined. Parliament has just processed the Budget Framework Paper in which government outlines its next financial year expenditures (budget). Each ministry shows in this paper how much money Keith Muhakanizi has, on behalf of President Museveni, allocated them. Slight changes can be made in subsequent processes.
Ministry of Health has listed 17 priorities in this Budget Framework Paper that are either unfunded or not funded at all. The ministry wants Shs 105 billion to buy diagnostic equipment for regional referral hospitals, but has been allocated zero shillings.
It also wants Shs 67 billion to buy ambulances but has been given zero; expansion, construction, equipping and staffing of Uganda Heart Institute at Shs 259 billion but given zero; supervision of health facilities in the country at Shs 10 billion but also given zero. I think to save Health from embarrassment, pleading for this project has been left to shameless people in Finance and the political class.
People don’t go to India for treatment because of absence of Lubowa hospital. They go because the health infrastructure in the country has been run down by the military junta whose appetite for power remains insatiable even after 33 years.
All that is promised at Lubowa is better equipment to diagnose and treat cancer and heart-related diseases and kidney transplant. Why not give the Heart Institute the required Shs 259 billion and it helps you on all these referrals to India?
For me, and you will excuse me, I think the Lubowa hospital is a decoy for looting public resources. And this is where I want to invite the Vatican to intervene. The beneficiary of all this is that Italian lady Enrica Pinetti who we are told is very close to the Vatican.
She is reported to be a friend of African dictators including Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Libya’s late Muammar Gaddafi. That she is a lobbyist and also helps with procurement of military hardware.
I have nothing personal against this lady or any other investor but depriving the poor is an offence in my faith. The Vatican, by its nature, should be donating, and not taking from the poor. That is why, it should disassociate with this lady and her satanic project.
In a February 25 letter to speaker Kadaga, Museveni lambasted Mulago for failing to treat patients who are referred abroad. Really? This man is without shame. How do you blame a cow you are not feeding and you are mismanaging for not producing milk? Â Â
semugs@yahoo.com
The author is Kira Municipality MP and opposition chief whip in parliament.
