Mayor Munyagwa absconds from council meetings for three years

KAMPALA. Kawempe mayor, Mr Mubarak Munyagwa has reportedly abandoned his mandatory duties of presiding over division council meetings for three consecutive years causing outburst among a section of the division councillors.
Recorded minutes from the division, copies of which Daily Monitor has seen, show that Mr Munyagwa last chaired a division council meeting in July 2011, where he endorsed and gave instruments of power to his deputy Mr Ibrahim Kamihanda.
He has since, according to councillors relegated his mandatory duties to Mr Kamihanda as his deputy and since then, he has never chaired any other council meeting.
Mr Kamihanda on Tuesday said he has been chairing the division council meetings because they could not postpone them due to the absence of one person.
“Division council rules of procedures provide that the urban council meetings shall be chaired by the speaker to the council, who in this case is the mayor assisted by his deputy. So, I have been playing my part as the mayor’s deputy,” he said.
He added that, although Mr Munyagwa has not been attending council meetings, he has “at least been signing invitation letters to councillors to come for the council meetings.”
Mr Kezekia Ddamba, the councillor Kikaya parish, Kawempe division said it’s unfortunate that Mr Munyagwa continues to enjoy public privileges and resources without returns.
“He is actually abusing public resources, because every month he is given a salary for performing the duties of a mayor, a privilege he has continuously abused,” he said.
However, Mr Munyagwa said in an interview that the urban council meetings “lost substance” for him to attend.
“What can we debate in such council meetings when there is no budget coupled with the fact that we lost our oversight role as politicians? I have no time to waste in meetings that lost meaning,” he said.
“I want someone to tell me, which resolutions that have been passed by any urban council that KCCA ever implemented. Are we there to act like stools for top officials to eat big? I can’t be party to that syndicate,” he retorted.
The KCC Act 2010 stipulates that a division mayor shall, “preside over the meetings of a division urban council and head it in developing strategies and programmes for the development of the division urban council.”
And in November 2013, Kampala Capital City Authority councillors at City Hall impeached the Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago accusing him of abuse of office, incompetence, misconduct or misbehaviour and failure to convene meetings of the Authority without reasonable cause.
The report by an instituted KCCA Tribunal later showed that Mr Lukwago was guilty of all the charges.
According to KCCA political salary structure, a division mayor earns about Shs11million, with everything consolidated in that salary, except fuel for the official vehicles allotted by KCCA for official duties.

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