Africa-Press – Uganda. Soroti District local government council has slashed allowances for councilors and executives due to a significant drop in local revenue.
Despite approving a local revenue budget of Shs638.2M for the 2023/2024 financial year, only Shs236.3M has been collected, forcing the council to reduce allowances.
“We appreciate efforts, but our budget is limited,” said Bob Owiny, a member of the finance department, adding: “Increasing allowances for executive leaders would further strain our budget, which has been struggling since 2021 when Soroti City was created, annexing most of our revenue bases.”
The councilors’ allowances have been reduced from Shs 480,000 to Shs 350,000, while the LCV chairperson’s allowance has been cut from Shs4.5M to Shs 4M, monthly.
The speaker and vice chairpersons’ allowances have also been reduced from Shs2M to Shs1M, and executive members’ fuel allowances have been cut from Shs1M to Shs500,000.
Every financial year, the district councilors are expected to sit for a maximum of six council meetings and six committee meetings but in a heated debate, the local leaders were forced to reduce the meeting schedules to eight sittings for both council and committee meetings that will be held after every three months.
Attempts by both the district chairperson Mr Simon Peter Edoru Ekuu and the district council speaker Mr Stephen Olebe to plead for additional allowances on fuel for executive head to Shs5M per quarter from the initial amount of Shs4.5M, was futile as councilors rejected the requests protesting low revenue.
“Sometimes, people need to appreciate efforts and when we are passing these budgets we should look at offices but not individuals. If you are to go Kampala now you don’t spend less than Shs450,000 on fuel. This means I must reduce travels yet there are so many programs that require my presence to try to bridge the gaps,” Mr Edoru noted.
This particular item that lasted 1:30 hours was finally concluded after an elaborate explanation and guidance from the clerk to council Mr Moses Esatu, who spoke in permission of the chief administration officer Mr James Ochen.
“We need a moderately reduced budget to cater for allowances. Our revenue collections have been dwindling since 2021, and we require a more flexible budget to handle office issues,” he explained.
Mr Esatu informed the council that the issue can be amended to provide a vote for increments if more funds are realized through local revenue collection in the future.
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