The opposition has demanded for the effective funding of local government civil servants salaries to address the unemployment crisis in the country.
The shadow minister for local government Betty Nambooze Bakireke told journalist at parliament that government should allocate 1.126 trillion shillings o for recruiting the local government civil servants for service delivery in districts and end the long understaffing crisis.
She proposed that 38% of the national budget for this financial the opposition needs parliament to allocate it for running the local governments.
Nambooze alleged that most local governments in the country lack manpower to push for service in areas and she cited out that 34 districts don’t have chief Administrative officers , 56 have no district Education officer, 49 have no health officers,82 lack district Engineers, 81 miss out Agricultural officers , 58 lack chief fiancé officers among others.
She said that some districts are managed by two officials while others are run by deputy Chief Administration officers saying that some districts to fill the gap of understaffing have resorted to sharing staff , statutory bodies and buildings.
She noted that this financial year government allocated 2.3 trillion shillings to districts of which 1.5 trillion meant for salaries 394.2 billion shillings for non wage expenditure and only 414.9 billion shillings for development saying this is too little to improve service delivery at the district level.
Nambooze asked government to amend the laws governing local government so as local council councilors are of O-level qualifications since UPE and USE is in place to have councilors who can critically monitor the government funds and projects .
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She also called for provision of 20 billion shillings to pay the local council councilors so as they work effectively and demand accountability.
She further asked government to slap a ban on creation of districts and re-emerging some of the districts created before to reduce on the existing districts saying fragmentation of some districts has caused tribal clashes and may lead to insecurity in the country and she proposed that instead of district creation , there should be municipal council creation in some areas.