Doing my usual morning harvest knowledge from social media round, I happened on a post on the wall of a face book friend which immediately compelled me to share it. It is about our dishonorable Members of Parliament (MPs) of Uganda’s 10^th Parliament. Here it is:

“Not even death shall deprive the Honourable MPs of their comfort. Here is the breakdown of costs (UG Sh 68 million or US$ 20,000) that Ugandan taxpayers must meet to send their dead MP on his or her final journey.

 Please note the casket which looks like a Ugandan style casket is not comfortable enough. It has got to be American (United States of America).

 Also note that our honourable MP’s corpse must be placed into a VIP grave.

 Oh! And those flowers must be Carnations and VIP wreaths!

 Not forgetting the “order of service booklets”.

 Folks, not even Anne Kansiime could have made this one up – the budget: Item Cost (Shs): 

• American Casket 6,000,000
  
• Transport of Casket 1,450,000
• Professional Services 400,000
• Pall Bearers – 1 day 150,000
• Lowering Machine 150,000
• Casket Tent 250,000
• VIP Grave Construction 1,500,000
• Grave 4,000,000
• 15 VIP Wreaths 1,500,000
• Carnations (on stands) 4,300,000
• Video Coverage & still photos 1,200,000
• Church Choir 400,000
• Order of Service books (1500) 4,500,000
• Public Address systems 1,800,000
• 15 tents (100 seater) 3,600,000
• 4000 chairs for 2 days 4,000,000
• Generator hire 1,600,000
• Feeding (1500 people) 15,000,000
• Water 1,000,000
• TV/Radio Announcements 800,000
• Mobile toilets 600,000
• Allowances to police 7,536,000
• Total Cost per burial 67,736,000”

Yes, my coping mechanism is first to laugh out loud. I needed to release the stress. For the irony is that it is clear that right from the start, one cannot be blamed for entertaining the thought that our MPs of the 10^th Parliament of the Republic of Uganda are significantly seemingly brain dead already.

Why would one need police on duty at their funeral when they are actually a people’s representative? Are they expecting their corpse to be pelted with stones? What social services can that over 7.5 million in allowances provide for a constituency – clean borehole water for at least our village of the now twice dead MP perhaps?

For those other than us, the constituency members of the deceased, coming to our MP’s funeral, you who are above drinking borehole water, since it will be there, you can come with your own bottled water.

For us it makes more sense to use the one million for water together with the 600 thousand for mobile toilets to construct more long lasting cooking gas producing pit latrines in honour of our deceased MP.

Why is there a need for 15 million to feed mourners when Operation Wealth Creation (OWC) is so successful? We, the farming residents of the deceased MP’s constituency, are rapidly moving into middle income status, so our living MPs are slavishly proclaiming. So who needs feeding when they die?

What is the generator for when the rural electrification project was such a massive success, judging by the fact that the living MPs are not questioning it? In fact it was so successful and coupled with the success of OWC, which the living MPs are not questioning as well, we the constituents now have mobile phones through which we can massively exchange messages about our beloved MP’s death.

Unless of course the TV and radio announcements are for others – we wonder who, because even the MP’s colleagues have ipads that we bought for them using our taxes through which they can easily be informed.

The 1.6 million for the generator and the 800 thousand for the announcements can be used to better honour our deceased MP’s memory by buying scholastic materials for the Universal Primary Education School in our village.

Our deceased MP did a lot for us so we shall be distraught with grief that our MP has died again so I doubt we shall need chairs – our deep grief shall propel us to roll around in the mud. We have no use for chairs we shall be too grieved to sit on them.

That four million for hiring plastic chairs, likely made in China, which can’t even carry the weight of the colleagues of our deceased MP – the seemingly living MPs – and the 3.6 million for hiring tents we welcome for use in the technical institution in our village.

Yes, for everyone single one of those budget items I can go on and on to provide an alternative budget vote through which it can be used in a truly honourable manner. Better still, why should we even pollute the environment by cutting trees to make and transport caskets for burying our MPs?

Why not honour their dishonourableness by doing what is good and cremate them? Let us as set them on fire – they seem brain dead now and will be dead then and so they will not feel a thing. If MPs are cremated many of the other costs are saved instantly, including saving our land, which we can put to better use.

Most importantly, by cremating the dead bodies our MPs we can given them a chance to return to live in a more useful way, use their ashes as manure in which to grow a tree – as trees they will have eventually served us well. Yes, am talking about innovations such as Bios Urn for whom the post photo credit goes as well.