Fearmongering or scaremongering is the deliberate act of spreading frightening and exaggerated information with an intention of arousing public fear or alarm about a particular issue.
Those who engage in fearmongering, often give a one-sided story that tends to fuel their desired impact and more often are likely to engage in selective amnesia so as to achieve their one-sided narrative.
A leaked letter by Richard Byarugaba, the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) Managing Director, to the Minister of Finance, Hon Matia Kasaija in response to growing calls by NSSF members, to be granted a portion of their savings- at least some 20% to be able to fend off the anticipated negative effects of Covid-19, falls short of the expected standard of an NSSF Managing Director, who ideally is employed by NSSF members.
Ideally, you would expect, Byarugaba, who has rebuilt the image of the Fund on a promise of a better life, to warm up to the idea and even call for a virtual members meeting to spur ideas on how this better life can be made a reality, without compromising the sustainability of the Fund, but NO. This time, the usually unconventional Byarugaba won’t entertain any other views on how NSSF can play a part in the lives of its members, who by all predictions are likely to face a rough 2020 and beyond.
In the absence of a balanced position and or alternative ideas on how NSSF can contribute to shaping that better life they have so passionately preached about, Byarugaba’s explanations are more close to scaremongering than anything else.
Byarugaba is a well-educated man with over 2 decades in banking. NSSF employs several other well-read and exposed financial experts. The fund is not short of financial capability to hire the best financial experts from all over the world to be able to model workable alternatives that should comfort its members. In spending so much time narrating the ruin that would visit NSSF, its projects and economies of the countries where the Fund has invested its members’ savings- without mentioning at all or even offering a solution for the members or even their employers whose fate is intertwined, is literally throwing NSSF members under the bus.
And this is not to say that NSSF’ reasoning is wrong- but at this time, NSSF members are more interested in the solutions that will work for them, rather than those that will not work. NSSF management needs to start reasoning and thinking that what is good for the NSSF member and their employers is good for NSSF too.
True, the anticipated UGX2.6 trillion pay-out (20% of NSSF’s UGX13 trillion fund value) may be too much to pay-out at once, but who says this is the only way how it can be paid or perhaps the only way how NSSF can come to the aid of its members? Again it could also be true that by NSSF liquidating its assets to come up with the UGX2.6 trillion could have a negative impact on financial markets in Uganda and in the region- but isn’t there a positive to it as well? Why doesn’t Byarugaba discuss this as well so as to guide the policy makers on the best way forward?
For all the good reasons that Byarugaba raises, he should give us the other alternative view otherwise, some of his NSSF member will hold him guilty of scaremongering, selective amnesia and intellectual dishonesty- a failure to apply standards of rational evaluation that one is aware of, usually in a self-serving fashion.