Passenger vehicles operating within Kampala Capital City Authority are set to start paying road user fees from its jurisdiction starting next month.
According to a statutory instrument by the Local Government Minister last year, vehicles with a capacity of between seven to twenty people operating in Kampala will pay Shillings 720,000 annually.
While, those with the same capacity operating beyond KCCA’s jurisdiction will pay Shillings 840,000 and those with a sitting capacity of between 21 to 60 passengers will pay Shillings 2.4 million annually.
Cabinet reinstated the payment of road user fees following its suspension in 2017 by the president citing complaints by taxi operators about the exorbitant fees.
However, after the partial lifting of the first lockdown in May 2020, KCCA registered all taxis and buses. The Works and Transport Ministry then issued the operators temporary route charts that expired in December.
Road user fees payment was supposed to start in January this year but was delayed because the Works Ministry was still drawing permanent route charts for taxis and buses.
Now, Samuel Sserunkuuma the Director in Charge of Revenue Collection at KCCA, says that they are scheduled to start collecting the fees come next month.
He says that unlike in the past, working with Uganda Revenue Authority-URA, they are currently configuring the system to allow partial payment following pleas from the operators.
Sserunkuma says they are in the final stages of completing the configuration and expect the system to be ready by end of this month. They have lost over Shillings 60billion over the years they haven’t been collecting the money.
