Olara Otunnu: Government Covid19 response commendable but not enough
Open Letter to the President
By Olara Otunnu
Your Excellency , Mr President ,
Re : Uganda’s Response to Coronavirus .
Our country , in tandem with the whole world , is under siege from a deadly , invisible enemy , Coronavirus ( Covid-19) . Barely two months following its discovery in Wuhan , China , this little-known new virus had already turned the whole world upside down . In its wake , we are witnessing the decimation of lives and the collapse of livelihoods ( economies ) on a scale unknown since the influenza epidemic of 1918 .
Overcoming the pandemic has become an existential struggle for all societies and all governments . For the most part , all governments are drawing from the same repertoire of response measures ( testing & tracing , washing hands & physical distancing , banning gatherings , closing schools , controlling travel & borders , stopping work , imposing quarantines and lockdowns , etc ) , under guidelines provided by WHO . The effectiveness of responses has varied , turning largely on the timing , robustness and comprehensiveness of the response measures adopted .
Mr President , here in Uganda , you have been spearheading our national response . That is the reason for addressing this open letter to you . Since mid-March , you have now convoked the nation on 15 occasions to deliver televised addresses , devoted to Coronavirus . You have issued 35 mandatory directives . The nation-wide lockdown , first announced on 21 March , has been renewed three times .
From the outset , I must express a very warm tribute to our health professionals and scientists . They have risen to this moment with great professionalism and dedication . Under the very able leadership of Health Minister , Dr Jane Ruth Aceng , they have demonstrated , against enormous odds , that they are up to any task , anytime . The stellar performance of these unsung heroes , underscores the appalling conditions in which they have been labouring for so many years .
Another impressive success has been the awareness campaign . All communities in Uganda are now well-informed about Coronavirus . Hand-washing routine has caught on everywhere . May this continue long after Coronavirus ! The big challenge , requiring more effort , remains practicing physical distancing . Ugandans are finding it difficult to adapt to this rather strange , anti-social , but absolutely necessary conduct . For the foreseeable future , we are bound to observe physical distancing everywhere .
Mr President , the measures you have promulgated are all on target . Indeed all of them correspond to WHO guidelines and actions taken by other countries . In order to draw necessary lessons for the long fight ahead and for future crises , it is important to review key aspects of Uganda’s response . This is the purpose of this open letter to you .
- Major Lapses in Response
We have been especially weak on testing . Yet aggressive testing within communities has been the key to effective response everywhere .Without wide randomised community testing , we cannot know the levels of infection within the country .
The focus , during March , on monitoring arriving passengers at Entebbe Airport , was necessary and important . Unfortunately , this exclusive preoccupation with one entry point , diverted attention from three equally crucial sources of risk that needed very early intervention , namely : travelers entering Uganda through land borders ; cross-border truck drivers ; and community testing . The rapid testing survey conducted since end of April is useful , but it came quite late and its coverage remained narrow . Mercifully , the survey results are reassuring . But without broader and longer community testing , it would be premature to conclude that “we have no community transmission “ .
Unlike entry into developed countries , most travelers enter Uganda through formal and informal land border crossings ; some also enter via lakes Victoria and Albert . Apart from South Sudan , Coronavirus announced its impending arrival by striking our neighbors first . From the very beginning , government should have focused , like a beam , on these high-risk , corruption-prone , porous land border points . But , until end of March , it was ‘business-as-usual’ at these border-points . This was a major lapse in response .
The worst and most costly lapse in response relates to the cross-border , long-distance truck drivers . We have known , since the earlier experience with HIV-AIDS , that this group can be a particularly efficient conveyor of contagion . Following a series of WHO alerts , and certainly the arrival of Coronavirus in our own neighborhood , government should have made the monitoring and testing of truck drivers its absolute top priority . Testing of these drivers only started on 16 May .
Incidentally , I notice that government has suddenly started to divide into two categories ( Ugandans and non-Ugandans ) persons who have tested positive within Uganda . This is chauvinistic and misleading . This fight is about public health , not nationality .
The high spate of infections emanating from Dubai seemed to have caught government by great surprise . Dubai has become a massive air transit hub for travel to China , Europe and North America . For our traders , it is the largest sourcing center for consumer goods destined for Uganda and many other African countries . That is why the three daily flights , from Entebbe to Dubai , are always packed . In the context of Coronavirus , our intelligence would have quickly signaled Dubai as a source of far greater risk for Ugandan travelers than any European or North American country .
If ever there was a crisis tailor-made for a collective response by the East African Community , then it is certainly Coronavirus . By now , several EAC virtual summits should have been held , devoted to Coronavirus , to charting a harmonized EAC-wide strategy and response . Where is the EAC , when we need it most ? Valiant but divergent national interventions are inefficient and not as effective . For Uganda particularly , as a small , landlocked , transit country , it will be well-nigh impossible to insulate itself from what may continue to circulate in the regional neighborhood . It is simply in everybody’s interest to press for collective regional response ; it is late , but not too late.
- Important Pending Measures
Mr President , you have issued a raft of directives . However , we have not yet heard anything concerning some of the most critical necessary measures . Let me signal some .
Most people are hurting terribly from the impact of the lockdown . Families across the country are actually starving . A lot of SMEs and informal-sector operators risk collapsing altogether . We have been waiting for two critical packages from government. First, a relief package to provide immediate mitigation and support for those in desperate need ; this package would should include relief measures for taxes , rents , loans , utilities , and food . Second , a financial package designed to stimulate economic recovery after lockdown ; this should especially target small-scale farmers , informal-sector operators and SMEs .
The 2020/21 budget was prepared before Coronavirus turned the world up-side-down . We have a radically new situation . That budget must be revisited . It should now be devoted to three priority tasks : containing Coronavirus , mitigating the impact of the lockdown , and facilitating economic recovery .
In the regular budget as well as the recent supplementary budget , “ classified” expenditure , continues to loom unnaturally large , amounting to a whopping 2.8 trillion shillings and 524 billion shillings , respectively .Government must now level with Ugandans about the purposes of these enormous , unaccountable funds . For years , this mysterious expenditure has operated effectively as a private ATM at State House . It was always a scandal . But given the pain of Ugandans today , this is all the more unacceptable and immoral . The “classified” funds should be redeployed for the epic fight against Coronavirus.
We all are very proud of the heroic efforts of our health workers and scientists . To underscore the importance of their work and the appreciation of a grateful nation , government should immediately earmark funds to support them and facilitate their crucial work . Immediate provision should include adequate PPE , necessary hospital equipments , logistical support , ambulances , and decent wages .
We are now witnessing the humiliating spectacle of the government , begging bowl in hand , frantically pleading for donations from the public , to buy everything ; to buy PPE , ambulances , vehicles and machines for hospitals , testing kits , etc . Where then has all the government money gone , from taxes , international aid and grants , and loans ? Before this crisis , how many ambulances and hospital vehicles had been purchased by government itself ( not NGOs , embassies or MPs ) ? Instead of investing in our own health service , government has been spending over 500 billion shillings annually for medical treatment abroad .
Mr President , I notice that , with long-haul cargo stuck at our borders , you have been calling for the urgent revival of the railways , arguing , correctly , that “railways is a far more efficient and economic means of transporting cargo than trucks “ . I welcome this epiphany . It was your administration that deliberately dismantled ( in favour of self-serving private interests ) the railways , together with several key institutions and services , including : cooperatives ; marketing boards for coffee , cotton and produce ; Uganda Commercial Bank ; Uganda Airlines ; subsidies and support to farmers ; etc. These institutions and services were designed to empower Ugandans and build a solid domestic economic base .
A particularly important pending issue is the reopening of schools . Closing was easy , opening is more complex . I support government decision to start with candidate classes only . In the ‘new norm’ , it will be necessary to organise physical distancing , hand-washing , mask-wearing , temperature monitoring , and randomized testing , in schools . This is a major undertaking . Moreover , most rural schools simply do not have the facilities to adapt to the ‘new norm’ . A lot of planning , reorganization and new investment are required before full reopening can be safe .
In any democracy , there is no exercise of power without accountability . That is why , as they take tough response measures to contain the pandemic , we see leaders , all over the world , regularly reporting and seeking approval of their parliaments . This has not been the case in Uganda . This is highly anormalous . It is critical that the far-reaching measures you are compelled to take are reviewed and scrutinized by Parliament .
In the televised addresses , you have unveiled several immediate steps and the reasons behind them . We now need a national plan of action , setting out a coherent and systematic strategy for this long fight . Since you have started to ease the lockdown , people are eager to know where all this is heading .
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III. Non-partisan Leadership
Mr President , when their nations have been under a crisis of this magnitude , historic leaders have reached deep within their own souls and decided to park on the side their entrenched partisanship , self-serving interests and parochialisms ; this for the sake of the greater common good . At this seminal moment for Uganda , will you find it within yourself to do this ? Some of the recent actions have been quite alarming .
Consider the saga of food distribution . All over the world , when the population is exposed to hunger ( as Ugandans are today ) , their government will readily welcome all who can pitch in - - charities , churches & mosques , leaders from all sectors - - to distribute relief to those in distress . At this very moment , this is going on in most countries . Alas , in Uganda , you have decreed otherwise . Apart from the government task force , nobody is allowed to distribute relief. Can it be that calculated political gains that may accrue from this monopoly are trumping the desperate needs of starving Ugandans ?
Mr President , you have gone one step further . In an extraordinary development , you have actually ordained that any persons found distributing food , outside the official task force , would be charged with committing “attempted murder” ! When I first heard you say this , I was stunned . I thought this was a ‘slip of the tongue ‘ that you would immediately correct . Instead , you have repeated this outrageous pronouncement with obvious glee . How have we come to this ?
This pronouncement has incited certain elements in the security forces to commit atrocities . This is the backdrop to the arrest , torture and savaging of Mityana MP , Francis Zaake . I could not believe that your only reaction to this horror was to ask a casual rhetorical question . You wondered aloud why the police singled out Zaake , while turning a blind eye to food distribution by government ministers and NRM big wigs . So , in the the matter of torturing Zaake , the president and the commander-in-chief has suddenly become a helpless bystander !
Mr President , all this calls for some serious soul-searching .
Mr President , the world will not be the same after Coronavirus is done with us . From the ravages of this pandemic we can draw seminal lessons to reset and reorder key aspects of our nation’s comprehensive brokenness . Once again , this calls for a genuinely patriotic , non-partisan leadership that is animated , above all else , by the best interests of Uganda and Ugandans . In this , history will judge them , not by their words , but “ by the fruit they bear “.
Mr President , lest I forget , I saw your office push-up routine . Quite impressive .
Please , accept my best wishes for your continued good health . May God protect and bless our country in this moment of great tribulation .
Olara Otunnu
22 May , 2020 ,
Buddo .
