Museveni orders revamp of  UBC

President Museveni has issued directives to revamp Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC) from the financial distresses that has crippled its operations for years.
 Among others, he ordered that government will be taking over all the Corporation debts.
In a March 6 letter to the Prime Minister, the President said he had received a letter from the UBC managing director, Mr Winston Agaba, showing his concerns about under-funding of the national broadcaster, denial of advertisements by the government accounting officers, the need to pay penalties on delays for contribution to NSSF and PAYE, among others.
“They have old equipment that must be replaced. I, therefore, direct all concerned authorities; in the budget of 2024/25, we should start giving them (UBC) the Shs30b per annum they have been crying about,” Mr Museveni’s letter read in part.
He further directed that all government advertising must be through UBC, stressing that any accounting officers that deviates from the advertising directive must be dismissed.
According to Mr Museveni, this will enable UBC to buy state-of-the-art equipment for its services.

To address the challenge of UBC’s overwhelming debts and accumulated penalties for delays in contributing to NSSF and PAYE, the President ordered that “the penalties for delays in paying NSSF contributions and PAYE must be scrapped and the government should take over the debt of UBC.” However, without giving details, Mr Museveni said there are some allegations of inefficiencies at UBC, promising to address them at an appropriate time.
Last month, the Speaker of Parliament, Ms Anita Among, handed over modern radio transmission equipment worth Shs2.5 billion to UBC following a presidential directive to boost the broadcasters’ operations. These included, two transmitters, a standby generator, UPS, automatic voltage regulator, band pass filter, change over switch, equipment rack, antenna system and a feeder cable.

When contacted, Mr Agaba said the presidential directives have come at a very prime time when a number of the Corporation projects have stalled due to limited resources.
“Everyone knows that we have obsolete equipment. The digital migration was never completed and it is the reason why Ugandans are paying to watch the local channels, which is totally against the goal of digital migration,” he said.
He added: “We need to build a national broadcaster that everyone is proud of, can you imagine that the national broadcaster does not even get 5 percent of the government advertising budget!”   

Mr Agaba further revealed that whereas the Parliament allocated a Shs32b budget for this financial year, UBC has received only Shs4.5b.
However, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) yesterday wrote to the Prime Minister, seeking her intervention to halt the implementation of the presidential directive which orders all government adverts to go through UBC.
“The NRM government has been pushing and promoting the agenda of a private sector driven economy, thus such a directive might be interpreted to be against the same and detrimental to the private media business,” NAB letter read in part.