Allow me to express my dissatisfaction with the central region Members of Parliament.
Recently, Member of Parliament for Mukono municipality, Betty Nabooze came up with a bill suggesting to regulate consumption of alcohol in the country.
This bill is meant to create an impression that in Uganda our people are poor primarily because of high consumption of alcoholwhich is not true. In our bars, according to my observation, there are four categories of alcohol consumers.
There are those who are constantly drunk on liquor bought on their own money; those with drinking membership cards like those who grace Kampala Clubs; those who booze on occasions such as priests at the altar and traditional rituals and the last category which has the majority of drunkards are those who are always waiting to be treated to drinks by their money bag friends in bars and at any event.
In all these categories of liquor slaves, it is evident that there are several reasons why people consume alcohol but it has in no way contributed to their poverty.
The fact is that it is because of redundancy that they consume alcohol. If you were to check, you will discover that the majority of our people are unemployed therefore what better way to pass time than to consume beer.
If our MPs are concerned about poverty then I suggest they find an everlasting solution to massive redundancy because this is the main reason to liquor slavery.
As an MP, I would expect Nambooze to find avenues that would empower people to be busy atleast 8 hours a day because I expect an MP who earns in the region of 20 million a month to become an investor say in a factory which can be able to empleoy some of the unemployed people.
But our MPs beeing what they are they would rather bring bills which do not help the poor.
Because they are poor investors, all the money they earn on a monthly basis end up building rental houses that cannot help on our unemployment issues. To make matters worse, most of our politicians have off shore accounts in foreign lands where they stash their monies.
Therefore, Nambooze’s argument to eliminate alcohol consumption is cheap politics because in a redundant society, boozing is a solution to curbing stress therefore if you put a stop to alcohol consumption, we are most likely to face a sea of mad people.
