Parliament bans MPs' trips on plenary days

Parliament has banned all field trips for  committee members on the days when the whole House has plenary. 

The decision comes at a time when the plenary is suffering poor attendance as many committees are out on field trips. Parliament has plenary sessions from Tuesday to Thursday.

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Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa’s directive comes after Mr Silwany Solomon (Bukooli Central) asked him to recall all the MPs who are on official field trips to vote for the candidates of their choices in the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) elections.

“Rt Hon Speaker, I thank you for organising the nomination for the Eala seats. However, many of the committee members are out on official field trips and visits. I implore you to call back our members to come and vote,” he said.

Mr Tayebwa, who chaired yesterday’s session, said all trips taken when the plenary is on are cancelled with immediate effect.

“It has been brought my attention that committees are always in the field when there is plenary. I want to put this clear as a directive to all committee chairpersons and to the clerk that no clerk and committee chairperson should take committee members to the field when we have plenary. This will only happen on special clearance by the office of the Speaker on special assignments by the presiding officer,” he said.

It is not clear how many committees are in field to carry their oversight roles. Mr Tayebwa yesterday said all the trips, including those that should have taken effect today (Wednesday), have been canceled with immediate effect.

“We need to do the work of this House, you have processed reports, and you must remain here and listen to reports from the committees. You can’t only be here when we are processing your business and not here when other people’s business are being processed. So clerk cancel all travels for the committees to the field,” he said. 

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Currently, Parliament has a total of 529 members, who cannot be housed in the chambers. During the lockdown, the house amended the rules of procedure to provide for online attendance through zoom link.

The speaker also reduced the number of physical attendance to only 100 and who physically attends the plenary would be decided by the different party whips.

However, about a month ago, Mr Tayebwa also announced that all the conditions during the lockdown for which the office had cut down the numbers had been suspended and that all members of the House are supposed to attend the plenary in person.

Parliamentary rules of procedure state that a member can be removed from the House if he or she is absent from 15 sittings without permission of the Speaker.