The Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago together with Councilors have reiterated a call for an increase in the annual budget allocated to Kampala Capital City Authority-KCCA to at least one per cent of the national budget.
Currently, Uganda's national budget is 44.7 trillion Shillings.
KCCA passed a budget of 441.79 billion Shillings in 2021, to facilitate its operations for the financial year 2022/2023. But, Lukwago and the councilors argue that this is far below the annual allocation of at least 1.5 trillion Shillings envisaged in the KCCA five-year Strategic Plan launched in 2020.
The city has multitudes of unfunded priorities, among others the Kampala Drainage Master Plan which requires an annual allocation of 700 billion Shillings. The others are; the construction and re-development of six city markets budgeted at 1.7 billion Shillings, greening Kampala at 1.2 billion Shillings, drainage improvement at 8.6 billion Shillings and Public Health which needs 20 billion Shillings.
According to Lukwago, some sectors that have remained underfunded over the years include the much-needed construction of roads which was allocated 205 billion Shillings and Road Maintenance which receives 26.35 billion Shillings under the Road Fund. Kampala has a total of 2,100 Km of the road but only 646 are paved.
Lukwago says KCCA needs its budget expanded to deal with challenges like flooding in the City through the implementation of the Drainage Master Plan. He said this while giving his opening of the year speech at City Hall on Thursday.
Nasur Masaba the Deputy Speaker of KCCA says it is absurd that even when Kampala makes the highest contribution to the country’s revenue collection, its budget allocation is not even one per cent of the national budget.
Masaba wonders if the Central government deliberately underfunds Kampala because of its voting patterns that seem to favor the opposition.
