Lukwago, councilors reignite demand for increased funding to Kampala

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago has reignited demands for an increase in the annual budget allocated to Kampala Capital City Authority-KCCA to at least one per cent of the national budget. Uganda’s national budget for the current financial year is 44.7 trillion Shillings.

Last year, KCCA passed a budget of 441.79 billion Shillings to facilitate its operations for the financial year 2022/2023. But this is far below the annual allocation of at least 1.5 trillion Shillings envisaged in the KCCA five-year Strategic Plan launched in 2020.

As a result, the city has multitudes of unfunded priorities, among others the Kampala Drainage Master Plan which requires an annual allocation of 700 billion Shillings. The others are; the construction and re-development of six city markets budgeted at 1.7 billion Shillings, greening Kampala at 1.2 billion Shillings, drainage improvement at 8.6 billion Shillings and public health which needs 20 billion Shillings.

Some sectors that have remained underfunded over the years include the much-needed construction of roads which was allocated 205 billion Shillings and Road Maintenance which receives 26.35 billion Shillings under the Road Fund. Kampala has a total of 2,100 km of the road but only 646 are paved. Lukwago says KCCA needs its budget expanded to deal with challenges like flooding in the city through the implementation of the Drainage Master Plan. He was giving his opening of the year speech at City Hall on Thursday.

Francis Mbaziira, the Councilor representing Kampala Central One, also the Chairperson of the KCCA Public Health Standing Committee says that Kampala needs more than 200 trucks to efficiently collect waste generated by its inhabitants. Currently, KCCA has 19 operating garbage collection trucks and only ten more have been purchased and yet to be delivered.

The Deputy Speaker of KCCA Nasur Masaba says it is absurd that even when Kampala makes the highest contribution to the country’s revenue collection, its budget allocation is not even one per cent of the national budget. Masaba wonders if the Central government deliberately underfunds Kampala because of its voting patterns that seem to favour the opposition.

According to the national budget for the Financial year 2021/2022, Defence received an allocation of 3.4 trillion Shillings, Uganda National Roads Authority received 3.1 trillion Shillings, the Ministry of Health was given 1.4 trillion Shillings while 1 trillion Shillings went to the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development. Agriculture, the backbone of the economy, received an allocation of 500 billion Shillings.

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