Uganda

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The Committee on HIV/AIDS and Related Matters has prayed for government intervention to curb the spread of the virus in the border districts of Tororo and Busia.

During the committee's oversight visit to assess the impact of HIV/AIDS amongst the populations with emphasis to commercial sex workers, drug addicts and people involved in acts of homosexuality, the committee also visited Tororo Municipal Council, Bison Health Centre III, Malaba Health Centre and Busia Municipal Council.

The committee led by its chairperson, Hon. Sarah Kayagi, held meetings between 10 and 12 May 2023 with key district leaders who decried the continued increase in HIV/AIDS infections.

Available information at the Ministry of Health indicates that the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Tororo district was at six per cent in 2020 and that there were 893 new infections.

Persons living with HIV/AIDS in Tororo informed the committee that there is a need to extend support to their people instead of limiting resources to people in Kampala, the capital city.

The Tororo Deputy Resident District Commissioner, Albert Amula, urged the committee to ensure that the AIDS Trust Fund is operationalised and also that the committee uses its mandate to appropriate more money to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

“Since some of the donors who have been funding the sector are set to pull out because of the anti-homosexuality bill, the time is now for you to operationalise the fund,” he said.

Kayagi informed stakeholders that the anti-homosexuality bill that was passed by Parliament was not only intended to criminalise the acts of homosexuality but also incorporated rehabilitation and treatment of victims.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Parliament of the Republic of Uganda.

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Legislators have recommended that accounting officers found to be in breach of the law be dismissed from service.

The hard-hitting recommendation follows debate on a report presented by the Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee (Local Government), Hon. Martin Ojara Mapenduzi on the Report of the Auditor General for the Financial Year 2021/2022.

The report that focused on 27 district local governments, three cities, four divisions and five municipal councils was presented during plenary chaired by Speaker Anita Among on Wednesday, 10 May 2023.

In its findings, the report pinned some district accounting officers on gross negligence and recommended that the Permanent Secretary / Secretary to the Treasury hold them personally liable and reprimand them for failing to perform their duties and causing the return of funds to the Consolidated Fund.

Hon. Joseph Ssewungu, the Kalungu West County MP said: “The idea that once an accounting officer is implicated, he is transferred to another work station is making these officers think that they are invincible.”

Adjumani District Woman Representative, Hon. Jesca Ababiku, proposed that apart from holding the accounting officers responsible, other line ministries should also be held liable. She gave an example of the Uganda Support to Municipal Infrastructure Development Programme where the lands ministry delayed in planning and delivering plans for the projects.

According to the report, 35 local government votes considered were warranted a total sum of Shs1,278.2 billion equivalent to 21.3 per cent of the total warrants to the local governments' budget during the financial year under review.

The above is exclusive of local revenues and out of that, only Shs1,163.9 billion was expended, representing 91 per cent absorption of the budget released. This led to the return of Shs114 billion to the Consolidated Fund as a result of failure to absorb the resources.

Parliament has consistently decried low budget absorption as one of the hindrances to service delivery in local governments with some MPs faulting the finance ministry for delaying to disburse funds on time.

The Leader of the Opposition, Hon. Mathias Mpuuga, implored the House to carefully analyse the situation that local governments find themselves in, opining that one of the contributors to the problem is centralisation.

“We need to have a potted conversation as to whether de-centralisation is viable. We said we were taking services closer to the people but we instead took corruption,” he said.

“I want to invite this House to re-think the whole idea of devolution of powers. We need very serious reforms including through legislation,” he added.

He called upon MPs to become active on their district roads committees, emphasising that it is one of the best grounds to carry out oversight and prevent corruption by technical people.  

The Aruu North County MP, Hon. Santa Okot, reminded the House that issues of returning money to the Consolidated Fund was not a recent matter and queried why the Government was not finding any solutions to the problems yet the Auditor General's report always has the same recommendations.

Soroti City MP, Hon. Jonathan Ebwalu, informed the House that cities are still operating with municipality budgets and are borrowing equipment from the municipal as a result of underfunding.

The Minister of State for Finance, Planning and Economic Development (General Duties), Hon. Henry Musasizi, said that the money returned to the Consolidated Fund is spent on other priorities and cannot be ringfenced for the same previous appropriation.

Musasizi pledged to present a comprehensive report from the central and local governments on money returned.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Parliament of the Republic of Uganda.

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There was little progress in poverty reduction in Uganda during much of the decade leading up to 2019/20. Numerous shocks not only reduced economic growth, they also hampered the ability of households to increase their income, says a new World Bank poverty assessment report, Strengthening Resilience to Accelerate Poverty Reduction in Uganda.

According to the report, launched today in Kampala, about 30% of Ugandans were poor in 2019/20, a percentage only slightly lower than 31% in 2012/13. The poverty rate used in the World Bank study is based on revisions made to the poverty line by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics in 2021. Joseph Enyimu, Acting Commissioner in the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, has described these revisions as expanding the scope of Uganda's poverty measurements to cater for the cost-of-living in the country “within the context of modernizing societal aspirations and rising standards of living.”

Shocks have disproportionately affected Uganda's poor and rural residents, according to the report, with 40% of rural and 30% of urban households experiencing at least one since 2013. About 90% of farmers report that climate conditions have grown worse for agriculture over the last decade.

Given the limited amount of social assistance available in Uganda and the low resilience of households, “the poor were more likely to use detrimental coping strategies, such as reducing food consumption, which could have negative consequences for their human capital in the long run,” said Mukami Kariuki, the World Bank's Country Manager in Uganda. “As a result, at least 50% of Ugandans remain vulnerable to the risk of falling back into poverty in next two years.”

“Productive economic opportunities outside agriculture build resilience but these were not easily accessible to the poor,” said Nistha Sinha, a World Bank Senior Economist and one the report's two lead authors. Strategies that are known to increase people's incomes—such as the transition from subsistence agriculture to non-farm activities and migration from rural to urban areas—proceeded at a faster pace among the wealthier and more educated but were not readily accessible to the poor. COVID-19 slowed down this structural change and pushed many people back into subsistence agriculture.

“Education, health, and access to basic services are crucial for building resilience and for equipping a fast-growing population with the opportunities and skills needed to earn higher incomes,” said Aziz Atamanov, World Bank Senior Economist and the other lead author. “But access to these services remains very unequal.” The report demonstrates that access among children to such basics as electricity, education, sanitation, water, and health remains far from universal. The COVID-19 pandemic stalled the progress Uganda had been making in improving human capital growth, particularly in education.

The study also examined telecommunication services, an increasingly important factor in people's lives and in income-earning prospects. Closing the digital infrastructure gap stimulates economic growth and is especially relevant given Uganda's large population of youth. Yet the sector is held back by limited competition, which gets in the way of making digital services more affordable for existing users and discourages take-up by new users, who are typically less well-off.

The report calls for a two-pronged approach to poverty reduction. The first part of the approach is to raise productivity and income-earning opportunities by investing in the development of human capital. Targeting lagging regions and the country's most vulnerable groups, reducing barriers and costs to non-farm opportunities, and increasing competition in the telecommunications sector are all seen as vital to this. The second part is to strengthen household resilience both by addressing deficiencies left in human capital and by expanding safety nets for both Ugandans and refugees to lessen their vulnerability at household level. Ideally, social protection programs should also be accompanied by policies to promote the sort of non-traditional insurance and savings schemes that could prove viable in the large informal sector in Uganda.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of The World Bank Group.

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Distributed by APO Group on behalf of GITEX Africa.

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