By Leonard Kamugisha Akida,
NATIONAL
Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) has called on government to put in place specific measures to increase funding to local governments to allow them evolve, be responsive to prioritize rural development.
This call has been made by the party spokesperson, Sharon Oyat Arach while she was speaking to journalists at their party headquarters – Uganda House Kampala on Wednesday.
According to Arach, district local governments lack sufficient funding which hampers service delivery to the people.
“Local governments have both their own general and peculiar challenges. They are under funded by central government and victims of budgetary cuts that hampers their capacity to ensure good and proper service delivery to their people,” Arach said
She argues that insufficient funding of local governments compel officials at districts to practice open favouritism and nepotism during recruitment and retention of man-power since they compete for workers from open labour market.
“At times, they are polarised towards some form of favouritism and nepotism, which undermines the entire concept of devolution of powers. In some cases building institutional capacity for local government is still a pipe dream, and this presents its own challenges too!”
Arach suggests that some income collected from the areas which contribute to the nation’s economy should be retained to redevelop the area. She says this will ensure better utilisation of services from the central government and accountability.
The call come at a time when local government leaders in Karamoja sub-region are gnashing teeth following the iron sheets saga in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), which were meant to be destined to Karamoja sub region ended up being shared by the big fish in the government.
But Arach says that such an incident is one of the basic ways to ensure rural development which demands for prioritisation of local governments’ concerns.
