JINJA – President Yoweri Museveni on Wednesday July 14 met with the executive leadership of the National Youth Council in Jinja District.
During the meeting, Mr. Museveni urged that while “we must protect our cultural heritage from Western influence, we should change our mindset as citizens and choose to abandon the traditional methods of working for only ‘the stomach”
He said the West doesn’t have spectacles to see the difference between a woman and a man.
Mr. Museveni noted that the culture heritage must be maintained but others like the traditional subsistence methods that have claimed over 68% of the population, must be changed.
First, he said “we need to improve our social discipline specifically by reducing our expenditure on luxuries, big parties, and the likes; if you don’t have money, what money do you spend in bars? You go to bars and they are full, you go to where they are roasting pigs and the places are full. This is social indiscipline and it is part of the problem we are facing. We can start by being economically parsimonious,” he said.
He said that the government is ready to support youth who will form Saccos to engage in productive activities.
“Youth should know that when speaking to me, they are speaking to someone who was once a former youth. I was a youth but extraordinary youth, who was better than my elders at the time,” he said adding that “I preached a change to modern methods of farming when people in Ankole still believed that commercial farming was only for the elite.”
He said that the youth start by changing their general attitude, then change that of the youth they lead.
He said that ven if it means sensitising the people on changing to the money economy through Twitter, “I can also tweet and I will be there tweeting with you.”
