By:Charles Katabalwa.
Wakiso, Uganda: Makindye ssabagabo municipality is composed of 3 division that include masajja ,ndejje and Bunamwaya but only 11 kilometers are tarmacked ,about 15 kilometres are upgraded and most parts are still on marrum and others require routine maintenance.
Municipality Mayor Godfrey Ssemwanga says they wrote to ministry of Finance requesting for Uganda shillings 24.5 billion for road Financing in 4 years which they agreed to pay in instalments of UGX 6.5 billion every year but to their dismay only one year in 2021/2022 FY was paid and in this new FY 2022/2023 fund was cut to UGX 2.5 billion living the balance of ugx 15 billion missing which has affected the project of 10kms which were supposed to be constructed by Abubaker Construction company .
Ssemwanga notes that the contractor was supposed to construct 10 kms of Nfuufu Road, Sseguku -Nfuufu, St Noah Road, Swasi Road, Kikajjo road, Lower Kikajjo road , Upper kikajjo among others but they were not concluded because the funds are missing but the municipality has managed to tarmack, grading, shaping and compaction of some road s despite budget cuts.
However the minister of state for finance in charge of general duties Henry Musasizi recently clarified that the ministry released funds in accordance to resource envelope and in the release of funds for the first quarter several government entities received less money than they were supposed too.
Meanwhile Mutundwe kanaala cell councillor doubling as the chairman finance planning and administration Robert Waswa has disclosed that the municipality targets to collect 7.8bn shillings in this financial year 2022/23 which will be collected from property tax ,local service tax, trading licence Garbage tax among other avenues.
“As of October this first quarter for this financial year they had planned to have collected 1.79bnshs but unfortunately only 1.6bn has been collected living a deficit of about 800m shillings ” say waswa.
He adds that they are to embark on sensitizing tax payers on how this tax is paid in educating them on the benefits of this tax among other.
On the allegations of councillors and technical staffs conniving with various officials to swindling this revenue they have put up a committee to investigate the matter.