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Covid relief fund for vulnerable Ugandans to delay for another week
State Minister for Gender, Mr Charles Engola appearing before legislators on the Parliamentary Covid taskforce on July 7, 2021. PHOTO/ DAVID LUBOWA
Government has revealed that all vulnerable persons who had been lined up to receive the Shs100,000 Covid-19 relief cash to cushion them from shocks of the second wave of the virus will have to wait until next week.
The revelation was made Wednesday by the State Minister for Gender, Mr Charles Okello Engola who argued that the delay would be to allow government sufficiently comb through the gathered data and ably verify it for transparency purposes.
"To create transparency in what we are doing, after collecting all these data which will take one week from now, we shall have all the data we need. So after one week, we shall display all this data. This will be before the payment," Col Engola told legislators on the Parliamentary Covid taskforce.
This means that the exercise that was purposed to kick off tomorrow (July 8) will be delayed for another extra seven days for proper scrutiny of the collected information collected on the beneficiaries.
The lawmakers also demanded that government expands the list of beneficiaries to accommodate more people affected by the second wave and the virus-induced lockdown that was announced by President Museveni last month as one of the measures to contain the surging virus cases.
On Tuesday, government said a total of 21,480 vulnerable people from cities and municipalities would, starting July 8 receive Shs100,000 each as the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development rolls out the Covid-19 cash relief.
The money will be sent via mobile phone.
Gender minister Betty Amongi told journalists in Kampala yesterday, that money will be sent to the vulnerable families after uploading data of at least half of the targeted beneficiaries (250,553).
The planned government cash release, however, covers only 4.2 per cent of the targeted beneficiaries. Data of 479,627 (95.8 per cent) beneficiaries is yet to be verified and uploaded on the system for payment.
“We held a meeting with Kampala town clerks yesterday [Monday] and they informed us that they were processing their data,” Ms Amongi said.
