The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Kampala Capital City Authority-KCCA council could not meet Tuesday after the Executive Director, Dorothy Kisaka wrote to the Lord Mayor and Speaker indicating that the authority lacked the finances to facilitate the sitting. This forced the political leaders including KCCA Speaker of KCCA, Zahara Luyirika, Deputy Lord Mayor Doreen Nyanjura, and other councilors to conduct a crisis meeting to discuss the matter.
Luyirika said that the notice for the ordinary council sitting was issued more than three weeks ago and yet the executive director chose to respond by saying there are no funds to facilitate the meeting only a day before the sitting.
She said that the executive director sent two letters, one saying the authority lacks funds while the other, that the technical leadership of KCCA would not be around for the meeting since they have a meeting at parliament.
Luyirika said that the executive director seems to be finding excuses to stop the council from sitting, saying that the council shall not give up. She said that although they couldn’t sit on Tuesday, it had been resolved during the crisis meeting that they hold the next council sitting to discuss the authority budget for the year 2023/2024.
Doreen Nyanjura, the KCCA Deputy Lord Mayor also confirmed that on Monday the office of the Lord Mayor received a letter from the Executive Director, saying that the authority doesn’t have funds to facilitate the council sitting, which was communicated close to three weeks back.
Nyanjura said that such moves by the executive director are indicative of her intention to frustrate the activities of the council and demotivate the political leaders. She thinks that the executive director wants to interfere with the council’s probe into the process for the issuance of the different contracts for road construction and the terms in the contracts such as an exaggeration of some costs.
Different Councillors who attended the crisis meeting promised to turn up for the council meeting this morning to discuss the budget regardless of the Communication from the Executive Director. They said that they are committed to executing their mandate as elected leaders in the City and shall not let the Executive Director or otherwise deprive the people of Kampala of their representation.
However, the KCCA Deputy Executive Director David Luyimbazi, said that the technical wing has no intention to sabotage the activities of the Council. He said that the challenge they have observed is that Council has met severally but failed to conclude on different matters and depleted their budget for the sittings.
He however didn’t reveal at the time how much is needed for a Council sitting to be held.
He said that the technical wing shall go ahead with the budget preparations and that whether or not the Council discusses it, it shall be approved by the central government.
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