Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago is agitating for government to dismantle the Ministry for Kampala and allow Kampala Capital Authority to go back to the Lock government in a wake for streamlining and bettering service delivery in the Capital City.
While presenting his annual State of the KCCA Affairs address at the authorities gardens on May 30, 2023, cited a high level of corruption tendencies and poor performance by the technical wing, inadequate funding, the recommended for government to consider the disbanding of the Ministry for Kampala and let KCCA be under the Ministry of Local something he thinks will enhance service delivery
Lukwago also reasons that this will help to save tax payers money which is wasted in paying the directors for the different departments whom he says they don’t perform any function yet they are paid huge salaries and wages.
“ The service deliver at the Authority has been hampered by majorly three aspects; the grafting systems were the city has several appointed leaders who have not passed via public service but operating alongside elected leaders, lack of proper plan for the City and the inadequate funding from the central government. For purposes of streaming all these we recommend that KCCA should be taken back to the Local Government ministry.’’ Lukwago said.
He adds; “ Having a Ministry for Kampala is useless because for twelve year since the inception of the Capital Authority and the line ministry , the results of service delivery have been worse as opposed to the situation when it was still under Local Government. The consultants hired from South Africa and Israel gave a plan for the city but have never been implememted due to lack of adequate funding.’’
He also says that KCCA needs between UG Shs 1.4 – 1.8 trillion if it’s to perform its functions and roles well but there have been constant budget cuts and in the next finance year KCCA has been allocated only UG. Shs 423 billion which is not even a half of the needed funds.
The Authority now depends mostly on donors; say for garbage management, channel constructions and loans for construction and tarmacking of roads in the city. In the last FY, the authority only managed to construct only 7 kilometers of roads
Kawempe Division Mayor Emmanuel Sserunjoi who also attend the function also agrees with the Lord Mayor saying the pilot study has not brought positive results. He says the Kampala Capital Authority is the largest tax contributor to the government treasury yet when it comes to the apportionment of the annual budget it shares very little.
He says every the city becomes poorer in terms of service delivery because of poor funding by the central government something he says is done deliberately to fail the political leaders because they are almost all from the opposition side.
“ All programs in the Lord Mayors report are good but as leader in the City we are handcuffed because of the poor funding and the wars between elected and appointed leaders.’’ Sserunjogi reasoned.
The Member of Parliament for Rubaga North Abubaker Kawalya said that the city needs at least UG. Shs 2 trillion for better service delivery. He also agrees with the Lord Mayors idea of taking the Capital City back to the Local Government and be allowed to collect taxes and appropriate the collected funds itself without sending to the consolidated fund pool.
Kampala is the face of the country but if it looks like the way its looking then it give a poor representation to the visitors and it scares them away yet we need them so much for purposes of enhancing our Tourism sector which brings a lot of foreign exchange revenue.” Kawalya reasoned
By George Bukenya