Africa-Press – Uganda. The minister for Local Government, Mr Raphael Magyezi, has blamed Mbarara City leaders for delaying the implementation of the city’s development plan.
Mr Magyezi made the statement on Friday while officiating at the launch of the Mbarara City five-year development plan which should be in its third year of implementation.
“Do you think I do not understand these things? Your plan is for 2020 to 2025. Three years are already done, next week we are beginning the fourth year and you want me to launch it. What am I launching? Why don’t you first tell me what you did in the past three years and what you want to do in the remaining two years,” he said.
Mr Magyezi said the city, which was operationalised in 2020, should not delay having a development plan yet residents are interested in services.
“We need to carry out a review and evaluation of three years and a comprehensive plan for the remaining two years. Actually, it is the responsibility of leaders to tell residents what has been done and what has not been done since Mbarara attained city status, in terms of roads, schools, health, and other social services, at least say while starting you had 5km of tarmacked roads and now you have 10km,” he said.
Mr Magyezi after being convinced to launch the plan, asked leaders to focus on fighting corruption in order to implement their plans.
“Enforce measures to fight corruption as well as measures to ensure that you have finances. When you collect billions of money from revenue, when there is corruption, you are probably doing nothing…implementing this plan can only succeed with zero tolerance to corruption,” he said.
Mr Assay Abireebe, the city clerk, said the plan was developed in 2020 and some of the things have already been implemented.
Mr Abireebe, however, said: “In his view, the minister thought we should have briefed him on whether the plan is already being implemented and what we have done and we are going to submit to him what he has already achieved and that is why eventually he launched it after updating him on the progress.”
He said a comprehensive progress report will be compiled after a midterm review is done on the plan.
Development agenda
The Mbarara City mayor, Mr Robert Mugabe Kakyebezi, said 70 classrooms will be constructed in 18 primary schools, five health centre IIs will be upgraded to health Centre IIIs, and the health centre IV will be upgraded to a city hospital.
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