TITLE:
The Economic Impact of the Lockdown Due to COVID-19 Pandemic on Low Income Households of the Five Divisions of Kampala District in Uganda
AUTHORS:
Richard Wemesa, Christopher Wagima, Ivan Bakaki, Dickson Turyareeba
KEYWORDS:
Pandemic, COVID-19, Lockdown Measures, Government of Uganda, Households
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Business and Management,
Vol.8 No.4,
July
13,
2020
ABSTRACT: The
impact of the nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic
is causing tremendous and continuing hardships to low income Ugandans specifically
the casual worker’s section that earns and spends on a daily basis. Households
in the lowest income brackets are the hardest hit, due to inconsistency in
income streams of these household breadwinners and the inelastic nature of
basic expenditure of these households. The government has been providing food
relief support packages of posho and beans to this section of Ugandans starting
with residents of Bwaise, a suburb in Kawempe Division of the capital Kampala. The
government has also appealed to well off Ugandans to donate food relief
packages to the COVID-19 national task force to ensure food relief donations
continue throughout the whole specifically to the hard hit areas because the
duration of the food support relief cannot be estimated now but it
will depend on how long the lockdown situation will remain and what rate of
normalization is in the coming days after lifting of the lockdown. Objective of this paper: The objective of this short paper is, first to
provide realistic assessment of the massive impact of the lockdown due to COVID-19
situation in Uganda from a household perspective of low income families and secondly
is to propose a food relief support packages to low income households that have
been hit hard by this lockdown situation. Both must be considered in the short
term situation until the economy is able to bounce back in the medium term
situation.