Auditor General cautions against delays in financing 2021 electoral activities

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT  | The Auditor-General John Muwanga has warned that the delayed provision of funds to facilitate the organization of the 2021 general election, will affect the smooth running of the process.

The Electoral Commission requires 796.88 billion shillings for the organization of the presidential, parliamentary and local council elections during the financial year 2020/2021. The money was supposed to be released in three phases starting this financial year to enable proper and timely implementation of electoral activities.

However, as at June 30, 2019, a total of 141 billion shillings, equivalent to 18 percent of the total budget had been released to implement the activities of 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 instead of a planned 439 billion shillings, with only a year left to the polls.

Some of the critical activities on the roadmap include demarcation of electoral areas, re-organisation of polling stations, specialized training in ICT, biometrics and due diligence of ICT procurement, voter education, acquisition of biometric voter verification system, developing election document management system, digitizing election documents and setting up an election digital archive among others.

But Muwanga said that the earlier provision of 141 billion Shillings in the Medium Term Expenditure Framework did not finance these activities prompting the Electoral Commission to reschedule them to the last year of the election. He was presenting an Audit Report for the year ended December 2019 to the Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga, this afternoon.

He observes that the financing of the roadmap is behind schedule despite its gravity in having a smooth and peaceful electoral process. He appealed to government to consider prioritizing the financing of the roadmap.

In her response, Speaker Rebecca Kadaga revealed that the matter had been discussed in the December 2019 Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.

Without divulging details of their discussion, the Speaker, however, wondered why the country should incur more costs in buying new electoral equipment yet in the previous 2016 general election, equipment had been procured.

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