Heavy wage bill will weigh us down, say Mbale City officials 

Others are  four directly elected councillors and women councillors for the city council as well as male and female youth councillors, representatives for persons living with disabilities and older persons, among others.

According to local observers, Mbale City is likely to incur huge expenditure in terms of allowances and other related remunerations while dealing with the councillors.

They say this will have a negative impact on service delivery, which will further be worsened by the dwindling local revenue base.

Councillors earn 20 per cent allowances off the locally generated revenue.

Mr Musa Kasajja, the former speaker of Industrial Division, said:  “When you look at the collected revenue, it is not enough to cater for the number of councillors as per their expectations.”

He added that  the Local Government Act Section 170 states that councillors are supposed to receive allowances based on the locally collected revenue each financial year.

“But the big percentage of the same local revenue is supposed to work on the bridges, cleaning, drainage and paying casual laborers, among other things,” he said.

Mr Abbasa Wetaka, a former mayoral candidate for Mbale City in the just concluded elections, said the huge number of councillors will exert more pressure on the taxpayers.

“Mbale City is still crawling. It cannot support itself but due to corruption, it might take long to walk or it might become crippled,” he said.

Mr Wetaka said the elected councillors will become dealers in order to survive and also recover the money they spent in the elections.

“This is like giving a gun to a hungry soldier. He or she will use it to rob. This is how the councillors are going to survive, after five years, we will have nothing to show,” he said.

Mr Kenneth Khatuli, the acting Mbale City deputy Town clerk, said paying councillors will definitely become a problem.

“We have challenges of low local revenue and so paying councillors will be a problem yet they are our bosses. They always want to be prioritised,”he said.

He said high expenditure on councillors will also affect services like garbage collection, among others.

“If there is no correspondence in the increase of local revenue then there is a problem,” he said.

The former municipal council councillors used to earn Shs320,000 in allowances per council sitting. 

The Industrial Division councillors were paid Shs300,000 while those in Northern Division, used to get Shs150,000 and in Wanale the councillors got Shs50,000, respectively basing on local revenue of the divisions.

The councils under the Local Government Act, are supposed to sit at least twice in three months.

Mr Amos Mafabi, a resident, said Mbale City needs a capital base of Shs500b to boost businesses, so that they can be able to pay revenue.

“Mbale City needs to financially support businesses so that they can ably pay taxes but what they are good at is only levying taxes,” he said. 

Mr Akim Watenyeli, a former Member of Mbale Municipal Development forum, said the council has the capacity to collect more than Shs10b but they even fail to raise Shs1 billion at times.

He also blames government agencies of laxity in handling corrupt officials in the council.

“The government authorities responsible for fighting corruption have never apprehended anyone on corruption in Mbale despite numerous reports,” he said, adding that Mbale has a wide tax base but it is benefiting a few people.

The acting spokerson of Mbale City, Mr James Kutosi, said revenue collection has been affected by political pronouncements.

“The taxi parks, bus parks, boda boda, among others, are not paying any revenue to the council because they are waiting for President Museveni to tell them to pay,” he said.

 Daily Monitor has learnt that due to such presidential pronouncements, the council is losing about Shs1.5b per year, which could be raised in the taxi and bus park.

 However, Mr Mutwalibi Mafabi Zandya, the outgoing acting Mbale City mayor, said there is a need for the councillors to effectively monitor the collection of  local revenue.

“Since 20 per cent is for councillors to share, they should make sure local revenue is efficiently collected and not embezzled,” he said. 

Mr Kassim Namugali, the Mbale City mayor elect, said there will be maximisation of collection of local revenue in Mbale City and also ways to stop leakages.

“Mbale City has a lot of potential in terms of local revenue and there should not be a reason for worry. We are going to work with all stakeholders to see that all the revenues are realised in the city,” he said.

He said the digitalisation in collection of local revenue will help deal with the leakages. 

“Collecting money directly from the source is the reason why revenues are not realised in the city but we are going to put up systems to see that that comes to an end,” he said. 

Recently, Mr Justinian Niwagaba, the commissioner for Urban Planning and Administration, Ministry of Local Government, however, said cities have not yet received funding because: “They were approved after the 2021 national budget had been passed, that is why there is no funding yet. But in next financial year, there will be a budget for cities.”

New cities

Mbale is one of the cities that started operating on July 1, 2020. Others include: Arua, Gulu, Jinja, Mbarara, Fort Portal, Masaka, Mbale, Soroti, Hoima, and Lira.

 Mbale has two city divisions, Northern and Industrial.