17,000 petition to block Shs10 billion for MPs

Ms Sarah Kiyingi. File photo

Close to 17,000 people have signed an online petition challenging the allocation of Shs10 billion to members of Parliament (MPs), to fight the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19). 

The petition, is spearheaded by Ms Sarah Kiyingi, the former state minister for Internal Affairs.

Ms Kiyingi says that whereas she does not doubt the role MPs can play in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, she believes that the allocation is misplaced. 

The petition is addressed to President Museveni, Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga, and Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda. 

The petition has so far received 17,000 out of the 25,000 required signatures.

Ms Kiyingi says in the petition that given the lockdown, MPs are unlikely to be effective mobilisers since most of them are not in their constituencies and their targeted constituents cannot be reached because of the social distancing guidelines that were issued by the government. 

Ms Kiyingi proposed that the money should be sent to the National COVID-19 Taskforce and the Ministry of Health which are the lead agencies in the fight against COVID-19. 

“The petitioners are also of the view, that since there is a National COVID-19 Task Force in place, whose frontline ministry was allocated only Shs104 billion, instead of Shs404 billion, they had requested, that money should go to the task force, not to MPs,” Ms Kiyingi says.    

The petitioners have urged Ugandans MPs to emulate their counterparts in the region, who have forfeited their emoluments to support their countries to fight the pandemic. 

“Members of Parliament in neighbouring countries are contributing a percentage of their emoluments towards COVID-19 and Ugandan MPs are not ashamed to take billions of tax payers’ money to enrich themselves in the guise of using it to fight COVID-19,” one of the petitioners said. 

Last week,Ms Kadaga said that Shs10 billion was allocated to facilitate the House and MPs for Covid-19 emergencies.

She said the money is part of the Shs304 billion supplementary budget that was passed by Parliament last week.
While appropriating the money in the supplementary budget to different sectors involved in the fight against Covid-19, Shs10 billion was allocated to Parliament, raising a public outcry.

Parliament has already released its buses to the Ministry of Health to transport health workers to and from work, and has also released its ambulances for emergency response.
Individual MPs have also contributed their ambulances for their constituencies to bolster the district taskforces in the Covid-19 emergency response.
Ms Kadaga also said, without giving a breakdown, that part of the Shs10b will be used to maintain the ambulances contributed by Parliament and individual MPs, provide fuel and pay allowances for the drivers of the ambulances already released by MPs to help the Covid-19 taskforces at district level.

“The Members were getting calls for expenses on fuel and it had now become a burden to the MPs. They came here saying ‘find us some money from Parliamentary budget,” the Speaker said.
Ms Kadaga said that part of the money will also be spent by the committees of Parliament, which are following up on the Ministry of Health’s fight against Covid-19 and facilitating MPs who sit on the national taskforce.

Sources within Parliament revealed that each MP will be given Shs20 million as part of the Covid-19 fund to help them carry out sensitisation against the pandemic in their constituencies. The balance of the money will then go to fueling individual MPs’ ambulances, maintenance of the Parliamentary fleet that is already deployed to the Ministry of Health.