Government to impose charge, demand licences for church marriages
A couple exchanges rings during their wedding at a church. FILE PHOTO
What you need to know:
The responsibility will be on the clerics to collect a Shs35,000 from all couples intending to tie the knot.
For each church wedding, the State expects Shs35,000 and failure to do so will tantamount to a criminal offence, which could lead to imprisonment.
The burden of collecting and filing the fee has been bestowed on the church ministers, meaning that should they fail to deliver, they will be held culpable and punished according to the law.
Controversially though, the matrimonial celebration (wedding) must be done in a place licensed by the State; otherwise the ceremony will be regarded null and void.
In an interview with Daily Monitor on Friday, the director Civil Registration, Ms Eva Mugerwa, said this is something that should already be happening because it is a requirement by the law.
“We shall soon be knocking at your doors (Churches and other places of worship) to ask for what belongs to Caesar,” Ms Mugerwa said. However, the church need not worry about past weddings because the authority is only interested in fresh matrimonial celebrations.
For the meantime, the clerics are encouraged to just register all previous weddings they have conducted for data collection and storage and also help in tracking how many marriages have been celebrated over the years.
In her presentation, Ms Patricia Atim P’odong, of the Uganda Registration Service Bureau, said registration of contracted marriages comes in handy when a citizen may want to lodge objections or caveat to the intended marriage. Each marriage certificate is issued by the bureau at Shs5,000.
Clerics who attended the workshop organised by the bureau to brief them on the laws and requirements governing the acquisition of licences to conduct marriages, were not happy with the move.
“This requirement is part of an old colonial law which is about regulating something that is an inherent right,” Apostle Gyagenda Semakula of Victory Christian Centre said.
Apostle Semakula also reasoned that the development could be a State ploy to get money from the churches; something he says is untimely. He, however, agrees with the fact that the churches can help the state in gathering statistical data on deaths and marriages.
But he disagrees with government’s attempt to license places where marriage can be celebrated, saying most churches, especially the Pentecostal ones, are largely makeshifts.
Rev. Fr. John Bosco Kibuuka said the State’s list of requirements is too long to be complied with.
