You hear them on radio stations, see them on Televisions, they are plastered everywhere all over town. These are ads that promise people a lot of things, from hips and male genitalia enlargement to healing of strange diseases that modern medicine has failed to.
(web pic)
Last year I was at the reception of one of the leading radio stations in Uganda and found a crowd of people, it’s not uncommon since its obviously a radio station so people are there to put up ads or something else but this crowd was agitated and they did not look happy at all. I decided to ask one of them what happened and she told me that a man had advertised on the radio station about helping people get jobs in Ukraine and other European countries, so many people had applied and paid him a lot of money for the whole process and on the day they were to pick up their Visas from his office, they went there and found the office empty. So they decided to come to the radio station that had hosted the Gentleman and also run his ads hoping for
a chance that they can find a way to get in touch with him and get their money back, of course they did not get any chance to that.
I have heard stories of people who go for “Butt enlargement” injections that either leave them disfigured or paralysed or the stories about women being flown into other countries and used as prostitutes all for promises of foreign jobs, then the youths that are promised scholarships in the UK and other countries that look very attractive to them but they never get them. These are people who are registered and
legitimate businesses with websites and offices but they have robbed other Ugandans blind for years, yet nothing is being done about them.
There are so many incidents that can amount to evidence against these people, my worry is, if some of us are sensible enough not to believe such things? Who is protecting the majority of Ugandans who are easily duped into selling land or taking loans all to be part of these flimsy schemes? The bodies or even Government that regulate what the media does in Uganda, if they could take a step back and stop focusing on how much pornography the public is being exposed to or who is sleeping with whom, maybe come up with ways to get rid of these culprits. These are things that Ugandans need to be protected from.