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By Alexander Luyima | Hoima Post
(UGANDA) In 1984, Uganda set the national minimum wage at six thousand shillings a month. Forty years later, that figure still defines the legal worth of labour. It is a sum so low that it cannot buy a day’s meal for an average family, yet it remains the law of the land.
The World Bank’s poverty line is two dollars and fifteen cents a day. Uganda’s minimum wage does not reach that amount in an entire week. This is not an abstract statistic. It is the lived reality of millions of Ugandans who wake up every day to jobs that do not feed them.
Poverty Across Districts
In Kampala, a security guard working in the city center earns about one hundred and fifty thousand shillings a month. Rent in most city suburbs begins at two hundred and fifty thousand. The arithmetic is impossible from the start.
In Gulu, where the scars of war still shape the economy, casual labourers on construction sites take home as little as five thousand shillings a day. With maize flour now costing over four thousand a kilo, a family’s food needs swallow their pay before the week ends.
In Masaka, waitresses in roadside restaurants earn between eighty and one hundred thousand shillings a month. They serve meals they themselves cannot afford to eat.
The pattern repeats across Uganda. From Jinja’s factories to Fort Portal’s hotels, wages have remained frozen in a past that no longer exists. What has grown is the cost of living. Transport, rent, food, and school fees have climbed year after year, leaving the working poor trapped in survival mode.
A National Policy of Cheap Labour
In 2016, Parliament passed a bill to raise the minimum wage to one hundred and thirty six thousand shillings. Cabinet rejected it. The official explanation was that sector-based wages would be studied further. Almost a decade later, those studies have yielded nothing.
For many Ugandans, the refusal to act is not negligence but policy. The government has made a deliberate choice to keep labour cheap in the hope of attracting investors. The winners are large companies. The losers are ordinary Ugandans.
“This is not just about numbers. It is about dignity,” says Dr Sarah Muwanga, a development economist. “When people work full time and still cannot afford food or rent, the law is not protecting them. It is condemning them.”
What It Means for the Ordinary Ugandan
The wage crisis has created a country where people work but remain poor. It has forced parents to choose between paying school fees and feeding their children. It has driven young people into dangerous hustles on boda bodas, in stone quarries, and in sugarcane fields where injuries are common and compensation rare.
For women, the situation is worse. In districts like Mbale and Lira, female workers in hotels and markets often take home less than one hundred thousand shillings a month. Many supplement meagre incomes through unsafe means, exposing themselves to further exploitation.
The consequences go beyond poverty. When people have no economic security, they become easier to control. This reality sits uncomfortably with Uganda’s rising reports of brutality, killings, and disappearances at the hands of the same institutions meant to protect them. From Kampala’s streets during protests to villages in Kasese, citizens know that poverty and fear often go hand in hand.
Leaders Silent, Citizens Waiting
Parliament and Cabinet have the power to reconvene the Wages Council. The Constitution itself demands fair remuneration. Yet leaders, including Mr Yoweri Museveni and his ministers, have avoided the matter for decades.
Community advocates say enough is enough. “Ugandans are not lazy. We are not asking for free money. We are asking for fair pay,” says Annet Kembabazi of the Bunyoro Women’s Economic Empowerment Network. “The state cannot continue to use poverty as an economic strategy.”
Uganda’s Crossroads
Uganda today presents a paradox. The skyline of Kampala glitters with new towers. Roads in Mbarara and Gulu are wider and smoother than before. Oil pipelines and dams symbolize progress. Yet beneath these symbols lies a workforce trapped in laws written forty years ago.
The 1984 minimum wage is more than an outdated figure. It is a reflection of the value that the state places on its citizens. Until it is revised, Uganda’s development will remain a story told in numbers and buildings, not in the lives of its people.
For the ordinary Ugandan, the question is no longer whether the wage is too low. The question is how much longer they will be expected to work for nothing.
