President Yoweri Museveni has donated 1.3 billion shillings for the construction of the Uganda Local Government Association, ULGA house.
This is the second time, Museveni has contributed money for the house project, whose construction started more than ten years ago.
In 2009/2010 financial year, the President donated 700 million shillings, although the money was fully realized in the 2015/2016 financial year.
Gertrude Rose Gamwera, the ULGA Secretary-General says that the President offered the donation during the ULGA members retreat at Kyankwanzi last week.
Gamwera also says that for the past ten years, local governments have not contributed to the house project.
“For over ten years now, we have not registered any additional contributions from local governments as owners of the property despite formal requests to do so. As a result, the outstanding contract sums continued to accrue interest raising our level of indebtedness to the contractor to a total amount of over one billion shillings” Gamwera said in her December report.
As a result, the outstanding contract sums continued to accrue interest raising our level of indebtedness to the contractor to a total amount of over one billion shillings” Gamwera said in her December report.
In the same report, Gamwera reveals that attempts by the secretariat to fundraise for the house were fouled with the campaign elections at Entebbe in 2013/2014. She adds that since then, no receipts have come in form of members towards the house project.
ULGA, the body that brings together all local governments in Uganda is grappling with financial issues following irregular subscription from members.
By December last year, ULGA Secretariat had only received 458 shillings of the expected 5.5 billion shillings from all its sources since the beginning on the financial year.
The association has also accumulated debts worth more than 2.7 billion shillings and yet the secretariat demands over six billion shillings in arrears from its members’ subscription over the years.
But Gamwera is now optimistic that there will be change for the better since some of the issues that were affecting subscription have been addressed.
Joseph Lomonyang, the ULGA President-elect says his government will device appropriate means of ensuring financial inflow to the secretariat especially improvement of member subscription.
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