Africa-Press – Uganda. The size of our Parliament continues to grow consequently leading to higher costs to meet it’s ever rising financial demands.
For an economy that has more needs than funds to cater to and also given that we are in the middle of a pandemic (Covid-19) and have to borrow to keep up with the fight, shouldn’t cutting down on costs be top on the agenda?
According a to a January 29 story in Daily Monitor, at least 100 Members of Parliament (MP) in the 11th Parliament will operate from corridors because the House facilities can’t accommodate all the lawmakers.
The story titled, “Office crisis: 100MPs to operate from corridors”, reveals that documents from the Parliamentary Commission show that some legislators will be asked to share the available office space and 98 will be forced to operate without offices. The extra number of MPs is from the newly created districts, cities and municipalities.
The number has risen from 457 members in the 10th to 555 members in the 11th Parliament. Obviously, additional funds are needed to facilitate these MPs.
The same story also points to a Legal and Parliamentary Committee report which highlights a budget shortfall of Shs21.3b meant for salaries for the MPs from newly created districts. The same report asks government to avail Shs5.4b for purchase of new vehicles for the speaker, deputy speaker and directors.
Relatedly, it has been reported that the Ministry of Finance needs to raise Shs165b to purchase new vehicles for MPs in the 11th Parliament. There will of course be more expenditure on our legislators which according to law, they are actually entitled to. Be it as it may, is the law cast in stone?
Isn’t it time to review some of these entitlements since the number of legislators keeps bulging? Would legislation in this country suffer terribly if the number of legislators is reduced to a more manageable size? It doesn’t have to be a drastic change, it can be gradual but noticeable.
If nothing is changed, projections such as the one that the parliamentary budget is expected to rise from Shs667 billion in this financial year to Shs770b in the 2021/2022 financial year will be the trend for years to come.
Is there no way to slash these figures and instead fund sectors that actually grow the economy and therefore improve the livelihood of Ugandans? This is not to trivialise the role that our legislators play because they do play a major role is democracy. This is to merely change perspective and seek newer and probably better methods of governance and channel the very limited funds to more pressing national needs instead of putting more demand on the national treasury.
We should be looking at every opportunity to reduce our expenditure. So let’s work towards reviewing entitlements and numbers of legislators.
