A report from the Uganda National Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) on how Ugandans spend their time shows that out of the 24hours, Ugandans only use 5 hours to do paid for work and the remaining time is spent on unpaid for activities like resting, visiting friends and partying.
According to Dunston Aguta, a statistician at UBOS, this explains why povery levels have risen in the eastern and northern regions because they spend a bulk of their time occupied by non-work activity.
UBOS has released a report dubbed 2017/2018 Time Use Survey showing that Ugandans have become lazier, spending most of their time engaged in unproductive and unpaid for activities rather than activities that put food on their tables.
“I can believe that men spend only 3 hours on employment related activities and spend 9 hours on self-care and maintenance whereas women only spend 2 hours on employment activities and spend 10 hours on self – care which includes sleeping and visiting friends,” says Dunston Aguta.
This explains the recent statistics that were released in the Uganda National Household Survey 2016/17 which showed that people living in poverty increased to 10 million up from 6.6 million. In percentage terms, this means poverty levels have shot up to 27%, from 19.7% in 2012/2013.
“Despite the different government interventions to eradicate poverty people are literally not working even the few that are employed are not performing, adds Dunston Aguta a statistician at UBOS
Uganda National Household Survey 2016/17 report also shows that Eastern Uganda was the hardest hit, with poverty increasing by 27% while Northern Uganda, on the other hand, came out as least affected, with people living in poverty there dropping from 3.1% to 2.4% and these are the same areas where the Time use survey highlights to have huge number of reluctant people who spend most of their time doing unpaid and unproductive activities.
“I expected people in the central district to spend most of their time working, but people living in Kampala spend 7 hours of their time doing unpaid for work although its worse for those leaving in Eastern and Northern regions” Dunston Aguta says.
However the report shows that women be it educated, uneducated, rural or urban all spend a lot of their time doing unproductive activities different from the men percentage which is a bit lower.
