Stop blame game
The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) has accused the government of playing blame games as the country is hit hard by a hike in prices of essential commodities.
Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, the FDC spokesperson, says for months now, the prices of essential goods doubled over what he termed as increase in taxes on raw materials and imports.
Ssemujju claims the government is arm twisting people into believing that the sky rocketing prices are resulting from the ongoing war in Ukraine. He claims that the President, Yoweri Museveni lied to the public last week when he attributed the increase in prices to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“The truth of the matter is that prices have steadily been going up for months now. For example the price of petrol rose from Shs3800 to Shs5000 towards the end of year and has never gone down. At the time, truck drivers who had refused to pay for Covid-19 test at the Kenya border were blamed,Mr. Museveni, if you have been sleeping and you were awoken by the Russian invasion of Ukraine please know this problem has been ongoing. You must now think of real measures to ease the situation,” he said.
Ssemujju has instead attributed the increase in essential goods to taxes, he wants the government to exempt some basic commodities like soap,cooking oil, sugar from taxes to save Ugandans the expense.
Last week,the Deputy Speaker of Parliament Anita Among gave government until Tuesday, March 15 ,2022 to make a statement on the matter.
Stop blame game
“Let us give government time to prepare so that they can give us actions, not just lamentation. It is a multi-sectoral issue,” she said last week.
Her comments followed concerns by several legislators over high fuel prices that have since extended to other commodities like soap, detergents and sugar among other household commodities.
In his defense ,the State Minister for Finance, Henry Musasizi asked the House to grant him time to analyze the issue of inflation with technical officials and present a comprehensive statement on the matter.
“It is true that the lowest end of the population is finding it hard to access essential commodities because of the abrupt rise in their general price levels. But I need to show you clearly whether the impact of taxes is causing prices to rise,” said Musasizi.
