Mr. President, it was in 2003 when the Ministry of finance, planning and economic development came up with an act of Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets. In this act, your technocrats argued that government was spending a lot of money when repairing, buying and maintaining public assets using tax payers money and decided that in this new law, government agencies will procure brand new items like cars, office gadgets etc which after five years, shall be disposed off in public auctioning.
Recently, the same ministry in an effort to boost annual revenue suggested slapping a new blind tax on second hand cars as the only way to curb environmental contamination.
I am still wondering how naïve government can be to dream of having only brand new cars on our pathetic roads which roads have proved to destroy government brand new cars in just five years.
If our technocrats have been here for the last 30 years, they would have known the fact that it’s only second hand vehicles that have been able to navigate and ease transportation on our pathetic roads especially in rural areas.
Way back in the 1970’s, people especially in rural areas used to sleep on roadside waiting for taxis because very few people had interest to inject money in the transport industry which is unlike today because of easy access to second hand vehicles.
In addition, a zero mileage vehicle to reach our Ugandan market with tax inclusion is beyond the price tag of UGX 120million yet second hand vehicles are estimated in bonds in the region of UGX 22 million.
The perplexing question Mr President ‘Are our technocrats blind that they cannot detect possible outcry from the public if they give such advice? If an ordinary person can fail to earn a living that can enable them to purchase a brand new vehicle how do you expect them to welcome this new policy.
Felix Kyeyune, Konge, Makindye
