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Why Jinja City has failed to take off one month later
A view of Jinja City street yesterday. The city needs services such as garbage collection, road sweeping, street lighting, road repairs and markets management. PHOTO BY TAUSI NAKATO
What you need to know:
- According to him, Jinja had been allocated Shs35b, Mbale Shs42.6b, Arua Shs26b, Fort Portal Shs21.6 b.However, Speaker Rebecca Kadaga said the minister’s motion could not amend the Appropriation Act for the current financial year.
Since Jinja Municipality attained city status, several of its activities remain grounded due to lack of proper guidelines, the interim Speaker, Mr Moses Bizitu, said on Tuesday.
On April 28, Parliament approved the creation of 15 new cities, 10 of which became operational on July 1, including Jinja, Hoima, Soroti, Mbarara, Fort Portal, Lira, Gulu, Arua, Mbale and Masaka.
However, in Jinja City, with the exception of a refurbished town hall and replenishment of headed paper, the council is yet to organise any executive or committee meeting.
“We last had a [council] meeting in June; and since Jinja Municipality was elevated to a city on July 1, no sitting has taken place. All activities such as garbage collection, road sweeping, street lighting, road repairs, markets management and revenue collection are at a standstill,” he said.
He added that he is mooting an idea of inviting councillors for a meeting later this month under the old municipality [current Southern Division] to task the interim city clerk on how he will spend the Shs1.6b he received from the central government without the Council’s mandate.
“We passed a budget of Shs40b in the old municipality, but the town clerk has so far received Shs1.6b; we want him to explain how he will spend that money without our mandate as a Council because the city doesn’t have a budget,” he said. Mr Bizitu attributes the ‘confusion’ in the city to the Ministry of Local Government that granted the cities without laws to operationalise them.
“Mr Raphael Magyezi [Local Government minister] used Article 243, chapters 95-100 of the Local Government Act to appoint city mayors yet there is no law that empowers him to do so,” Mr Bizitu said, adding that they were elected by the people and the minister has no powers to terminate their term of office.
When contacted, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government, Mr Benjamin Kumumanya, did not respond by press time.
The Jinja Southern City Division interim Speaker, Mr Zein Abdullah, said the situation is gravely affecting councillors because they are not getting allowances.
“Since Jinja Municipality became a city, there has been no committee, executive or council meetings and we are now financially incapacitated,” he said.
Background
Parliament
On August 6, Parliament resolved to reject a motion tabled by the Minister of State for Planning, Mr David Bahati, which sought to reallocate funds in the Financial Year 2020/2021 budget to operationalise newly-created cities. Mr Bahati said he wanted the money that was allocated to municipalities to be diverted to cities.
According to him, Jinja had been allocated Shs35b, Mbale Shs42.6b, Arua Shs26b, Fort Portal Shs21.6 b.However, Speaker Rebecca Kadaga said the minister’s motion could not amend the Appropriation Act for the current financial year.
This was because the Ministry of Finance needed to first table before Parliament a law to facilitate the creation of authorities for the new cities and also an amendment to the Appropriation Act. She also said Parliament had not been availed with the list of accounting officers for the new cities who would be accountable for the funds once provided.
