Members of Parliament have key roles of legislation, representation, oversight and appropriation and not implementation of government programmes.
The Ugandan government has failed to find money to operationalise new 203 Town Councils and 198 Sub-Counties created across the country.
This raises questions on government’s appetite to create more administrative units that are not only costly to the tax payers, but are also ineffective.
Appearing before Parliament’s Committee of Public Service and Local Government on Thursday, Jeniffer Namuyangu, State Minister of Local Government said Shs160bn is needed to operationalise several new sub-counties, town councils and cities. The cost includes recruitment of staff.
Breaking down the Shs160bn, the Minister said over Shs100bn is needed for 203 Town Councils, Shs29Bn for 198 sub-counties and Shs30bn for cities.
Namuyangu told the Committee that out of the Shs10bn required to kick-start a Town Council, only Shs2bn was provided, leaving many Town Councils redundant.
However, despite all these lamentations of lack of funds, this didn’t stop the Legislators from asking for creation of more Town Councils in their areas.
Some MPs went ahead to accuse the Minister for only looking at districts from only one region, accusations Namuyangu refuted, saying all districts have a Town Council created.
Namuyangu further told MPs that nine municipalities including Mbarara, Gulu, Arua, Fortportal Mbale, Hoima, Lira, Jinja and Entebbe have been lined up to get city status as soon as government provides the funds.
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