Africa-Press – Uganda. An event to mark the International Day of the Girl Child was cancelled after the Ministry of Defence and Veterans Affairs informed the organisers hours to the D-Day that Kololo Ceremonial Grounds, the venue for the celebrations, was unavailable due to an emergency.
The event, which was supposed to be held on October 11, was to be graced by the First Lady, also Minister of Education, Ms Janet Kataha Museveni as the chief guest.
However, the organisers, the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, in conjunction with international partners and civil society organisations, were informed on the eve of the event that the venue would not be accessible.
The spokesperson of the Gender ministry, Mr Frank Mugabi, said the managers of the venue informed them about the cancellation of the even, but he quickly added that they were working on organising the event on another day.
“Kololo [managers] told us the venue wasn’t available,” Mr Mugabi said.
The Defence ministry, which has been managing the ceremonial grounds since March 2014, didn’t give the organisers the reasons why the venue was not available.
The theme of this year’s International Day of the Girl Child is “Our time is now – our rights, our responsibilities, our future.”
The organisers had reportedly budgeted for more than Shs370m for the event and by the day of cancellation, they had spent Shs166m to transport guests and accommodate them.
Some of the key stakeholders who had supported preceding activities and were key participants on the D-day activities included UN Women, Girl Up Uganda, Terre des Hommes, Plan International, Save the Children, Concern for Girl Child, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations Population Fund, Unicef and Watoto Ministry.
A number of them had moved the beneficiary girls from different parts of the country to Kampala in readiness for the celebrations.
Mr Mugabi said the ministry has channels through which those who had spent resources are able to get accountability for the wasted funds.
He said they have restarted the process of inviting their chief guest and they hope that she could give them a schedule when she would attend the event.
The spokesperson of the Ministry of Defence, Brig Gen Felix Kulayigye, said he was not aware of the cancellation of the event.
“I don’t know. I didn’t know that there was such an event,” Brig Kulayigye said yesterday.
Ms Munir A. Saafieldin, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) country representative, said the decision to cancel and postpone the event was made by the Gender ministry.
“We just got the communication that we would be advised on a later date to have the celebrations so we are not in a position to comment on why it was cancelled,” Saafieldin said.
Mr Edmond Mwebembezi, the communications officer for UN Women, declined to comment on the issue.
The Kololo Ceremonial Grounds are managed by the Ministry of Defence and Veterans Affairs since March 2014 after President Museveni instructed them to take over from the President’s Office.
The transfer of the management of the grounds by the Defence Ministry was protested by the Opposition saying it should be a public area that should be accessible to everyone.
No opposition or groups critical to the ruling party have been allowed to hold any event at Kololo since the Defence Ministry took over the management of the place.
From the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019, the ceremonial grounds have been the venue that the President, the First Lady and Parliament hold their major events.
On the day they hold the events, several roads near the grounds are blocked.
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