The bloated cost of public administration following the proliferation of districts government has now indefinitely suspended the creation of new adminsitartive units across the country .
In a statement issued by Local Government Minister , Mr Raphael Magyezi, noted that the continued creation of many small administrative units has widened the funding gaps of lower local governments and government is short of money to even run the exiting ones including the new cities . Already officials in the tourism city of fort portal have cried foul after they were told that government has no money to fund the activities of the new city .
“I want to inform the people, please don’t come to the minister of Local Government asking for more administrative units; they are not there,” Magyezi stated and urged the local leaders, to focus on creation of economic zones in the already existing districts to boost local revenue collection and fund their administrations .
“We are looking for money to fund the more than 720 sub-counties, which we recently created and besides, we are just from the election. There is no money to fund more administrative units.”
According to the minister, Uganda has 364 sub-counties, 352 town councils and 10 cities, which he said are waiting for funding from the Ministry of Finance for their operationalisation.
Invoking section 7(10) and 95 of the Local Government Act , the Minister said that he was suspending the creating , merger of districts indefinitely . Civil society actors have criticized government for creating unsustainable small administrative units that have emptied the national treasury without any tangible effective public services to talk home about .
