The Kawempe North Member of Parliament, Latif Ssebagala has thanked Ugandans who have shunned family planning methods and opted to produce many children.
The lawmaker made the remarks on Friday during the debate on statement tabled by David Bahati, the State Minister of Finance for Planning on World Population Day.
“I want to extend my appreciation to those Ugandans who shunned the crusade of family planning, and joined the crusade of family planting. I am supporting all Ugandans who are there to increase on our population and I encourage Ugandans to do the same. We are here in this House, NRM is in power because of numbers, the countries you are talking about is because of their numbers and population,” Ssebagala said.
However, Jovah Kamateeka, the Mitooma Woman MP said the quality of the population is equally important.
“We are fighting that families be able to have sufficient food and income generating activities so that children can go to schools and be able to access basic amenities and in order to do this, we have to be able to control the family size,” Kamateeka said.
She added: “But we all know that if we let families produce as many children as they can, whom they can’t look after, we can’t have a quality population. Is the member in order to state that we are here because of numbers and so, Ugandans should be able to produce as many children as possible?”
In response, Deputy Speaker, Jacob Oulanyah said: “Is it true that we are in this House because of numbers? A difference in opinion doesn’t make a person out of order. The Member has an opinion, different from yours; please don’t use the office of the Speaker to become a suppression instrument.”
Ssebagala added that there is no evidence that families with two or three children are doing well.
“Families with very many children are doing well and they go to school. Our responsibility as Government should be for proper planning but not stopping Ugandans from producing. I am discouraging family planning as much as possible. You talk of China, America because of numbers. We want to see Uganda reaching 100 billion people and I request members who can join me in that crusade so that we can move on,” he said.
The lawmaker questioned the Minister’s figures that Uganda’s life expectancy has improved from 45-63.
“I don’t know the parameters he has used because every other day, you see normal people dying from different causes. You need to clarify on the parameters you used to reach those numbers,” he said.
Paul Mwiru, the Jinja Municipality East MP joined the debate.
“When we talk about the population, life starts at birth. We need to interest ourselves about the infant and also the nutrition of our children in this country. Many parents don’t pay attention to the nutrition of their children and they forget that brain formation is between 1month and five years. In most of these places especially the villages, you see parents taking the bigger share of all the nutrition that would have been meant for the children and as a result, there is stagnation of these children,” he said.
He added: “There is an argument that when there are few children, then there is quality of life. I want to be a testimony myself, I am number 10 in the family of 13, just imagine if I wasn’t born, there would be no MP standing here. I think we need to contentualise, if we talk about land use in Uganda, it is at 15%, there are enough resources for all of us in this country, I think the problem is utilisation. So we shouldn’t use as an excuse of neglecting responsibility because there are many single mothers out there, when there are fathers in this country, we have fathered children and not bothered to take care of them, so at the end of the day, these single mothers have no capacity to take care of them.”
Denis Oguzu Lee, the Maracha County MP disagreed with those advocating for a bigger population.
“I have personally had the experience to live in middle income countries in Africa, where you see better planning for Government for its population; Botwasana, Namibia and South Africa.
While we are grappling in providing social services for our people, when I see colleagues calling for an increased population, I respectfully disagree.
At Committee level, we have disagreed with UBOS on figures of poverty reduction because when these figures are mentioned in Communities we come from, you may earn yourself a beating, let us try to leave them here in Parliament,” he said.
Butambala County MP, Muwanga Kivumbi said: “From the word go, I must say I am very conservative in thinking on this issue. By grace of God, I am 9th in the family of 30 with 25 graduates. Therefore, a question of poverty and population control should be carefully debated by African elites and you are making a mistake for relying in Western doctrine of thinking towards Africa. The African elites are forgetting their noble duty to raise quality, clever children. It is very unfortunate that a medical doctor in Africa, marries a lawyer and they have two children and somebody in the village who has never gone to school has ten kids and the graduates marry each other and they have two kids, the possibility of genetic engineering of clever people decreases as two clever people marry each other. So African elites must not have a vying in producing fewer children, we are ready to pay schools fees than living it to the less privileged.”
He added that MPs should have many children.
“It is very unfortunate that somebody of my capacity like my father, a humble driver has 30children and a Member of Parliament wants to have four children, it can’t happen,” he added.
After listening patiently, Jane Ruth Aceng, the Health Minister joined the debate.
“You realise that many people confuse family planning with not having children. The essence of family planning is that you can have a family that you can look after and they become people who can contribute to the economy of the country. It isn’t just about having ten children and you can’t look after them,” she said.
“It is about allowing the body of that woman to recover from the effects of pregnancy and child birth. If you don’t do it, then there are several risks of ruptured uterus and dying during labour and child birth.
The third is about giving her body time to regain in aspects of nutrition, so it isn’t just after production. We need to look at that issue critically, I appreciate what Ssebagala is saying but not everybody has four women, some people have only one and they want them to look young and beautiful, give their bodies time please,” she added.
