Aspirants for LC1, 2 and village women councils have got a reason to smile after the Ministry of Finance last Friday released Ugx. 56 billion to Electoral Commission to enable it conduct the long-awaited elections cross the country.
Ministry of Finance Deputy Secretary to the Treasury, Mr. Patrick Ocailap , said the Ug.Shs.56bn was released on Friday, June 12. “We released the required money to conduct the elections on Friday [June 12]. The ball is now in the Electoral Commission’s court,” Ocailap said.
EC Scretary, Mr. Richard Kamugisha confirmed receipt of the money. “Yes, we have now received the funds. It is on our system. We are working on fixing the dates for the elections. The commission will sit on Monday next week and fix the dates,” Kamugisha said.
Kamugisha said the Electoral Commission is prepared and ready to conduct the elections .“The commission had planned that the LC elections would be conducted in March, unfortunately we never got the money,” he said.
EC chairperson Justice Simon Byabakama said the delay had been caused by lack of funding. He added that the roadmap is already in place. “It’s the issue of money that has been holding us back. But we shall fix the dates within less than a week because we got ready long time ago,” Byabakama said.
The current LC1 and LC2 leaders were elected mlore than seven years ago and their term officially expired in 2023.
Parliament has since extended their tenure six times, with each extension lasting six months.
Uganda has more than 70,000 villages. LC1 structures act as the first point of contact between citizens and the central government.
They handle land and family disputes, certify residents for government programmes, support local security and mobilise communities for immunisation, census and development activities.
Kamugisha said the Electoral Commission plans to recruit 142,500 polling officials for the exercise.
The officials will support voter verification, register display, crowd management, declaration of lining-up procedures and tallying of results.
For voter register display and other pre-election activities, the EC will deploy one official in each of the 71,250 villages.
On polling day, the commission will deploy two officials per village. This will bring the number of temporary election workers to 142,500.
Sources said each official is expected to earn sh10,000 per day. Total earnings will depend on the number of days worked.
The recruitment is expected to create short-term employment for thousands of Ugandans, especially youth and unemployed people who have previously worked in election-related activities.
Kamugisha defended the cost of the exercise where voters will line behind their prefered candidates – noting that polling day is only one part of the process.
“Lining up is just one of the activities. The process involves more than lining up. It involves compiling the register and printing registers for each village. There are 71,250 villages. It involves displaying the register physically, cleaning it and allowances,” Kamugisha said.
He said the commission must follow the law to avoid disputes.
“The election is conducted according to the law. When the law says we print registers, recruit polling officers and other things, we have to do them, and all of them require money. Otherwise, if you don’t conduct the elections according to the law, the results will be contested and you will be taken to court,” Kamugisha said.
