Africa-Press – Uganda. The Electoral Commission has secured Shs 4.6 billion funding to construct a regional office in West Nile sub-region to ease congestion in the regional offices in the area.
During the groundbreaking ceremony on Friday in Arua City, the Chairman Electoral Commission, Justice Simon Byabakama, said: “In 2013, we decentralized offices in districts to extend services for all electoral activities. This resulted in high costs of renting offices across the districts. We now thought acquiring our own offices would cut such costs.”
He said the regional centre will be for offices, storage, nomination, conference hall and database collection.
“We believe this will give satisfactory delivery of all electoral processes. EC rarely receives funding from the government for such activities as office construction. We have now started construction of the 12 regional offices,” he said.
The contract has been awarded to National Enterprises Corporation, an Engineering department of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF).
The Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Mr Norbert Mao, who represented the Prime Minister, said: “This office (EC) should be the one that makes people happy. I have been a victim of decisions where I was deregistered. We need vigilant citizens and not violent ones during electoral processes.”
Mr Mao tasked the contractors and supervisors to ensure that they do quality and timely work within the stipulated eight-month period.
Rekindling the memories of the 2018 Arua Municipal Parliamentary by-elections that saw Mr Kassiano Wadri elected while in jail following the violence and killings during the last days of campaigns, Mr Mao said: “Arua’s elections are always lively and with morale. There is no country with effective elections. And human rights should not be suspended during elections.”
The Arua City’s Deputy Mayor, Ms Kalsum Fadhmula, said: “We shall monitor this project to the dot because we need value for money. This office will cut the administrative costs of the EC where they were renting and officials used to be in congested places. It should be an office where citizens can freely get data on the electoral process.”
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