At the beginning of this year, Parliament passed the amendments in the Kampala Capital City Authority Act. Among the insertion that were put therein are the sections 8A, 8B, 8C and 8D which speak about Speakers and their Deputies.
The Amendment Act, 2019 under sections 8A and 29A established the offices of Speakers and Deputy Speakers of the both Authority and Division Urban Councils respectively. Section8 A (3) States that the Speaker and Deputy Speaker shall serve on a full-time basis.
After passing it, in March 2020, elections for both Speakers and their deputies were held at both Authority and in all the 5 Division Urban Councils of Kampala.
However, ever since the elections took place and the speakers assumed offices in the third quarter of the last Financial Year 2019/20 up to the current Financial Year 2020/21 which is now in its second month of the second quarter, Kampala Ministry has failed to pay salaries of Speakers and their Deputies. This matter has made their existence irrelevant since they cannot do their work given the fact that the ministry has not even equipped their offices.
According to the Speaker Nakawa Division Moses Mubiru, the description of their work as per the act is huge, however, they cannot fulfil such obligations because they have not been facilitated. Mubiru said that they have tried to access severally offices regarding their payments and facilitation of their offices but their struggle has reaped nothing.
“Ever since we were elected in the office of Speaker on March 5th 2020 after the amendment of KCCA act, we have never received any salary as Speakers be it the equipment that the Speaker needs in the office to perform his or her duties. Even the offices they gave us to work from were empty, they had no equipment. We are working in a miserable condition we have written a lot of letters to responsible parties but nothing is changing,” said Mubiru.
Reacting to their complaints, the state minister for KCCA Benna Namugwanya Bugembe told this website that the matters regarding payments of all the Speakers and their Deputies that came in office as a result of KCCA amendment Act 2019 are in the hands of the office of the Solicitor General who advised the ministry not to pay the Speakers and their Deputies because the KCCA Act 2019 does not elaborate how they must be paid.
According to her,the latter from the office of Solicitor General states that the KCCA Act that was amended has to be re-amended to clearly explain how the new offices must be remunerated.
Minister Namugwanya said that Act only gives her ministry powers to pay the City Lord Mayor and Deputy, Division Mayor and the Deputy and Councilors both at the Authority and the Division.
“The new offices that were created in the new amendments, were not highlighted in the act how they must be paid, my advice to them is that let them be patient because the office of the Solicitor General advised us that after re-amending the act, we shall pay all their salaries right from their first day in the office,” she said.
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