By Mulengera Reporters
According to veteran journalist Grace Matsiko, who currently is one of the leaders in the sub sector, 450 private security firms currently exist and operate in Uganda, providing private security services.
These are scattered in all major cities of Uganda and combined, they employ a total of 100,000 security guards. These are always deployed to guard people’s private homes, offices, businesses, supermarkets, petrol stations, churches, hospitals, schools, washing bays, night parking yards and other facilities.
Working with fellow sub sector leaders (uniting under private security service providers association), Matisko on Saturday rallied thousands of individual private security guards (who he and others employ) to converge at Kitante Primary School pavilion near Kololo in Kamwokya for a meeting with officials from State House.
These are guards operating mainly in the Greater Kampala Metropolitan districts of Kampala, Mukono and Wakiso. The Kitante meeting was preceded by a petition that the association executives had days earlier written to the President complaining about over taxation and maltreatment by URA which they say is on the verge of taxing them out of business totally.
On receiving the petition, Gen Museveni who is busy on the campaign trail, dispatched his influential SPA-Political Affairs Moses Byaruhanga to go and meet the association members and their employees (the security guards) on his behalf.
The petition indicated that over taxation by URA was making it hard for the 450 private security firms to even pay salaries to the individual security guards they employ. That recently, URA agents insisted that one of the firms pays WHT and VAT off the expenses related to the beans and posho they purchase to feed the security guards they employ.
During the Saturday meeting at Kitante P/S, Grace Matsiko thanked Gen Museveni for the enabling environment he has put in place that has enabled the private sector to prevail but castigated URA for eroding all those gains by insisting on taxing them out of business. He made it clear they are already dragging URA to court to contest the outrageous tax assessments they have lately been receiving from its agents and officers in the field.
BYARUHANGA RESPONDS:
In his response, Moses Byaruhanga promised that he and the President are going to study the taxation-related grievances and take up the issue directly with the Commissioner General of URA. He said this is urgent especially once it’s clear that over taxation practices by URA are beginning to impact the welfare provisions for the individual security guards such as the purchase of beans and posho they are given for lunch.
He said the President would be open to look into the issue especially as long as it directly impacts and constrains private security companies’ capacity to decently remunerate the individual guards they employ.
Speaking before an audience of more than 3,000 security guards, Byaruhanga said there is a lot more that Gen Museveni can do to improve the welfare of individual guards and thanked Matsiko for reaching out and seeking to engage with State House directly.
He announced that the President had, upon receiving and studying their petition, directed the relevant government agency to immediately avail a grant of Shs2bn, which is his contribution towards boosting of the Sacco to which all the 100,000 belong. Each one of them makes a monthly saving into that Sacco.
Byaruhanga said the Shs2bn is meant to go towards recapitalization of their Sacco so that individual security guards can access cheap credit by borrowing money at low interest so that they are able to make personal investments and affordably pay back the money. He gave the example of Wazalendo for UPDF soldiers, which he said the President has generously been supporting and it has now grown to the level of almost becoming a bank.
That way (having a vibrant Sacco), Byaruhanga explained, the individual security guards can escape extortionist and exploitative money lenders who charge high interest and end up taking borrower’s property, staked as collateral to secure the loan.
Byaruhanga said this Shs2bn, which caused the security guards to go into ecstasy and spontaneously dance themselves lame because of extreme excitement inside the Kitante pavilion, was just the beginning because there is a lot Gen Museveni can and intends to do to improve the individual welfare of the security guards. He agreed with Matsiko that once the grievances, like over taxation, contained in the petition are addressed, the sub sector has potential to employ even a higher number of Ugandans than just the current 100,000.
SCRATCH MY BACK, I SCRATCH YOURS:
In what demonstrated the extent to which everything now in Uganda has become quid pro quo (transactional), Moses Byaruhanga made it clear that for those great things being anticipated to come to fruition, Gen Museveni has to first win his race and remain Uganda’s President beyond Thursday 15th January.
He has to secure re-election and continue being President of Uganda. Byaruhanga asked the cheering private security guards for his boss’ vote come 15th January. He told them that since Uganda is a democracy, Gen Museveni can only remain President upon securing the mandate of the people.
He tasked them to personally commit to voting for him instead of any other candidate for President. He required much more from them. He requested them and their association bosses (the employers) to make sure the other colleagues who didn’t attend the Saturday event are reached with the same message. This means reaching and converting 100,000 people. Each one of these has a best friend, an employee who relies on them for survival, a maid who qualifies to vote, a spouse and parents etc.
Byaruhanga said its possible for each one of them, once converted into Musevenism, to deliver a minimum of 10 votes. It was illustrated that if each one of them succeeds in delivering a minimum of 10 votes, the NRM candidate would be assured of an additional 1m votes and more from the private security guards’ ecosystem alone.
To demonstrate seriousness about this task, Byaruhanga (who didn’t rule out a future similar meeting between the security guards and Museveni personally) informed them that the secretariat of the Museveni special task force he (Byaruhanga) heads at Kololo had already obtained phone numbers for each one of them from their employers (the 450 private security companies).
This is going to enable State House to directly keep in touch with each one of them. Byaruhanga told them to expect personal messages directly coming from candidate “YK Museveni,” once again asking them for the vote.
The messages will come from 0701553057 and 0787593478 to their respective personal phone lines-either via WhatssApp or sms messaging. Byaruhanga alerted them that when they receive calls or text messages from either of these two lines, they should know it’s authentic from Gen YK Museveni’s campaign office, not kiwaani.
The veteran State House political strategist asked the guards to privately get in touch with the Museveni special task force offices via those very phone lines. They are free to use the same lines to update State House on the progress they individually keep making about the 10 votes each one of them was asked to deliver, after all the hard-working ones will surely be recognized and called to a public ceremony where a re-elected Museveni will personally engage and appreciate them, sometime after inauguration in May 2026.
Even when they get challenges as they mobilize the 10 votes for the big man from Rwakitura, Byaruhanga encouraged them to report such and seek support from his office using those same phone numbers, which he assured them are available and accessible 24/7. He assured them that everything would be treated in confidence without their respective identities being recklessly disclosed.
Matsiko assured Byaruhanga this was all okay and that by requiring each of the guards to deliver 10 votes, Gen Museveni wasn’t asking for too much. He asserted that majority of the companies’ owners and their respective employees, the security guards inclusive, are already converted Musevenists who had only become re-energized by the Shs2bbn contribution and the audience they got through Byaruhanga being an emissary of the big man from Rwakitura.
“We are ready to protect the gains and it’s our obligation. By tasking each one of us to verifiably deliver 10 votes for President Museveni, you aren’t asking for too much,” Matsiko elaborated as the audience ululated ‘our man no change.’
However, the social media videos emerging from the meeting have generated notable online negativity as some Ugandan social media users have since Saturday been raising the red flag claiming that, being armed 24/7 and because of the nature of the job they do, there is no need to politicize such security guards who are supposed to be non-partisan in order to be able to dedicatedly serve every Uganda.
Moses Byaruhanga’s Saturday engagement at the Kitante pavilion and the ease with which Gen Museveni parted with Shs2bn to capitalize the 100,000 security guards’ Sacco is all indicative of the fact that the NRM candidate badly wants a clean win come Thursday 15th January and isn’t prepared to take chances.
On Sunday, his daughter Natasha Karugire mobilized a significant number of Tik Tokers and online influencers/content creators and took them to the President who spent much of the day at State Lodge Nakasero casually interacting with them, while cracking all manner of jokers.
All this shows that the system isn’t taking chances and that everyone in the veteran leader’s orbit is determined to leave no stone unturned in securing victory against Robert Kyagulanyi come 15th January. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
