Kasese councillors agree to reduce their emoluments over low revenue collection

Kasese, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT |  The Kasese Municipality Council has unanimously agreed to reduce the councillors’ emoluments for the financial year 2021/2022.

The council also resolved to cut down on the emoluments of the council’s speaker, the mayor and their deputies. 

Kasese municipal council will have more than 40 councillors for the next five years.  This decision is a result of the low revenue collection that was generated in this financial year 2020/2021. 

The outgoing Mayor Godfrey Kabyanga says they have for far collected around 400 Million Shillings from the estimated 1.3 billion Shillings. 

According to local government guidelines, the administrative unit can only spend 20% of the previous financial year collections of local revenue on emoluments. 

The councillors in financial 2021/22 will now get 120, 000 Shillings instead of 150,000 Shillings.

Sebastian Tumusiime the chairperson of finance, planning and administration says that took the resolution due to the reduced revenue collections caused by the covid-19 lockdown. 

He says the council’s largest tax bases including Rwenzori Square that is hired for concerts and public meetings, hotels, liquor license and market dues have not contributed to the council’s coffers.

Tumusiime also says they have recorded high tax evasion rates in this financial year which has further affected the municipality’s financial basket. He says the councillors emoluments will only be increased depending on the revenue collections. 

Herbert Bwambale the councillor representing Rukoki Ward says they have accepted the decision after witnessing a shortfall in revenue collections in this ending financial year.

However, Baluku argues that with increasing community demands from leaders, they will toil through the financial year.

The leader of opposition in the municipal council Alfred Ikwera says they responded following the local government Act which suggests that council activities can only be conducted using only 20% of the local revenue. 

He says it’s now the role of the councillors to sensitize people to pay tax and defy more revenue sources.

But Kabyanga is optimistic that this could change with the operationalization of the new market, tax park collections among other avenues. 

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