The minister of Local Government Raphael Magyezi has revealed that newly created cities may not get money to run them as it was expected in this current financial year 2020-2021 due to Covid-19 effects on the economy.
In April 2020, Parliament approved 15 cities which included among others Masaka, Mbarara, Hoima, Lira, Fort Portal, Jinja, Soroti ,Arua, Mbale and Gulu. While passing them the ministry of Local Government made a decree that their operationalisation will start immediately and promised to give each start Shs100bn as a starting financial bag to run them.
Magyezi said that the outbreak of the pandemic created serious trouble in the entire world thus leading to the reduction in tax revenues of the country since most people were not working.
“This year was full of disasters. First it was floods, locusts and then the Coronavirus, all these have affected the government’s revenue earnings since we know that government earns from taxes and people have not been working for almost six months,” he said.
Magyezi added that this year, the government may not fulfil its pledge of Shs100bn on each city.
“This year it will be very hard for the government to give out Shs100bn on each city, people must also first ask themselves where this money is going to come from because I and you know very well people have not been paying taxes due to Covid-19. So taxes were few.”
According to Magyezi the Shs100bn was to cater for the construction of new roads within the city, buying land for headquarters and also creating industrial parks but since they started operating in July nothing has been done because of the pandemic.
However, Bukoto East Member of Parliament Florence Namayanja who was last month endorsed by the National Unity Platform (NUP) as the party flag bearer for Masaka City Mayor seat trashed the minister’s argument and said that she is taking the issue to parliament to force government to explain where the money they promised and passed in the budget for the city went.
According to Masaka City Mayor Godfrey Kayemba Affayo, the current budget running the cities is not sufficient to cater for other parts that were annexed to them.
“Our budget before turning into a city was Shs42 billion as a municipality, so financing the new parts that were joined to Masaka city is now becoming a serious challenge,” he said.
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