Government has retabled proposed amendments to the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) Act which had been shelved for close to two years.
The Kampala Capital City Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2015 was first presented to parliament on November 10, 2015 by then Attorney General Freddie Ruhindi. The bill now presented by State Minister for Kampala Benny Namugwanya provides that the Lord Mayor be elected by at least two-thirds of the Councilors and not through universal adult suffrage.
The bill also seeks to clarify roles of the Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor. It restricts the qualifications of contenders to those qualified to be Members of Parliament. This implies that contenders must possess an Advanced level Certificate of Education or its equivalent.
The mother act provided for qualification of the Lower Urban Councils as O-Level or its equivalent while the only qualification required of councilors Under the Local Government Act is to be a citizen of Uganda.
The changes, according to proponents, are aimed at breaking a long standing impasse, bickering and a power struggle between the Erias Lukwago, the Lord Mayor and political head of the authority and Jennifer Musisi Semakula, the Executive Director and technical head of the authority.
Lukwago accuses Musisi of usurping the powers of the Lord Mayor, depicting the office of the Lord Mayor as being ceremonial yet the Lord Mayor is empowered to head the Authority in developing strategies and programmes for the development of the city.
But the new law now proposes to clip the wings of the elected Lord Mayor, and give more powers to the Executive Director. It is argued that the current provision under section 11 (1) (a) of the principal act, contravenes section 3 (2) of the same Act, which places the city in the hands of the central government.
Also highlighted by the then minister for presidency Frank Tumwebaze was the continued administration of the City under a decentralized system yet it was given a special status of a City Authority and that this was the main cause of contradictions and clash of roles.
Upon receiving the bill, Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga tasked the parliament's Presidential Affairs Committee to handle the bill and report back to Parliament in only 49 days.