This archive report was first published on 20 July 2021.
As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, a peculiar trend is emerging in Uganda. Doctors and lawmakers are planning to protest against excessive pay, a move that has sparked interesting alliances and public support.
It all began in 2018 when hundreds of Canadian doctors staged a prolonged protest against being paid too well. At the time, a general physician working for the government in Canada was earning the equivalent of $260,924 a year.
Fast forward to Uganda, where the annual salary of a non-specialist Canadian doctor equals one billion Ugandan shillings. The country's lawmakers are now on the verge of experiencing a similar protest, with some MPs planning to strike over excessive pay.
According to Batty Nambooze, the leader of the Committee on Government Assurances and representative of Mukono Municipality, the MPs are protesting because they are being paid allowances for no work. This, Nambooze says, has turned them into thieves.
Interestingly, President Yoweri Museveni is getting an ally from the most unlikely quarters. Nambooze is fierce opposition, and her protest has sparked a Museveni-Nambooze alliance. The President has been critical of the lavish benefits of MPs, including well-facilitated benchmarking trips abroad.
With the Nambooze-led protest, Ugandan doctors might soon join the fray, mirroring the Canadian doctors' movement. The Covid-19 patients' families should indeed be helped to avoid selling all they have to pay for treatment that ordinarily would cost a small fraction of what they are laying now.
As the situation unfolds, one thing is clear: the public is eager to see an end to excessive pay for both doctors and lawmakers.
