Dear comrades,
I will use this to follow up my April 03 post to Gen. Yoweri Kavuma Museveni, President of The Republic Of Uganda.
Uganda’s leading export earner is tourism, with a target of over 3 million tourists per annum.
My questions to you Mr. President are;
1.what’s the probability that any sensible tourist shall visit Uganda where communication that is free all over the world in form of Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook etc attracts a direct charge?
2. Are you aware that any tourist as it is now is required to have a local number and even enroll on mobile money in order to use services like WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook etc?
3. Aware that communication is now considered a human right and to some countries WiFi even offered free, what’s your take on killing innovation in ICT in your own country that has failed to offer decent jobs to the educated class?
4. Do you think of the negative publicity Uganda gets from the over 2 billion potential tourists and investors in the world as a result of this disastrous tax plan?
5. Are you aware that social media has eased education communication, for instance conference learning, Whatsapp discussion groups for university students etc. These are cheap solutions through OTT? All these save time, money etc.
6. Are you aware that these apps had facilitated business for example lowering cost of advertisement on Facebook and through Whatsapp small business groups? Which investor will ignore for example our neighbors that have cheap power, near the port, low cost of internet etc and come to Uganda where all are expensive?
I urge you to rethink about this tax and it’s ramifications. Surely this social media tax shall have more harmful impact on our economy.
Since you opened up this discussion, time is now you use the same platform to answer the above questions. Let’s have the debate now.
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