The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Government has been given two months August to table all the necessary bills they want parliament to handle during the fourth session of the tenth of Parliament.
The session started on 6th June when President Yoweri Museveni delivered his State of the Nation Address.
During Tuesday’s plenary session, the Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga said that they would like to have all the business to be tabled by August to enable the different committees to start processing them and report back to parliament.
Kadaga says that parliament is mainly interested in the electoral reforms which they have been demanding from government for a long time.
Kadaga has also directed the Government Chief Whip, Ruth Nankabirwa to ensure that at least one of the Ministers in each Ministry attends plenary and if not impossible they should delegate another minister to present the ministry’s interests.
During his State of the Nation Address two weeks ago, President Museveni listed more than 70 bills that will be tabled before parliament for enactment into law during the coming financial year 2019/2020. However, 23 of these were carried forward from the list presented during last year’s state of the Nation Address.
Among the bills is the Uganda Institute for Diplomacy and International Affairs (UIDIA), Bill, The Foreign Service Bill, Public Service Pension Fund (Amendment) Bill, National Payment Systems Bill, The Bank of Uganda (BOU) (Amendment) Bill, The Public Procurement and Disposable Assets (PPDA) Bill, The Foreign Exchange Amendment Bill, Anti-Money Laundering (Amendment) Bill, 2019 and others.
All the Bills that had been promised by the President last year for tabling were not presented to Parliament apart from the Anti-Money Laundering (Amendment) Bill, the Roads Bill and the Land Lord –Tenant Bill.
The 49 fresh Bills that government proposes consideration in the coming financial year 2019/2020 include the Law Revision Bill, 2019 which was recently tabled before Parliament, the Succession Bills, the Electoral Reforms Bills, the Geneva Conventions (Amendment) Bill, 2018, the Witness Protection Bill, 2019, the Tourism (Amendment) Bill, the Museums and Monuments Bill, the Animal Feeds Bill, the Veterinary Practitioners Bill, the Agriculture Extension Services Bill, the National Forestry and Tree Planting (Amendment) Bill and others.
Notable in the new list is the Sexual Offences Bill initially tabled and later withdrawn by a private member Monica Amoding, the Kumi Woman MP which was listed by Museveni as a proposed government Bill.
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