LOAN FOR JACOB OULANYAH BURIAL? Museveni Government Clears Air on Reports of Borrowing Billions to Facilitate Late Speaker’s Funeral

President Yoweri Kaguta Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s government has broken the silence on reports that it will borrow Shs1.8bn to facilitate the burial of Jacob L’Okori Oulanyah, the late speaker of the 11th Parliament.

As we reported earlier, government will spend Shs2.5bn on Oulanyah’s burial. (Read Story Here).

When Ugandans complained that the money government was planning to spend on Oulanyah’s burial was too much, a minister in Museveni’s cabinet told them to stop complaining. (Read Story Here).

During plenary, Minister of State for Planning Amos Lugoloobi tabled a statement on Statutory revision of the Budget of Vote 104 (Parliamentary Commission) for FY 2021/22 by Shs1.8bn to facilitate burial expenditures for the late Oulanyah.

The Parliamentary Pensions (Amendment) Act requires that 30 per cent of the gross annual salary of the Speaker or Deputy Speaker who dies in office shall be used towards the funeral expenses.

After the minister’s statement, some reports claimed that government would borrow Shs1.8bn for the burial.

But Museveni’s government, through Minister Lugoloobi, quickly dismissed the reports, saying there would be no borrowing.

“Parliament is not borrowing: this is simply a revision from what we originally allocated to a new figure where we have added Shs1.8bn to take care of these burial arrangements.”

“Remember parliament is a constitutional body and constitutional bodies benefit from what we call statutory allocations, not supplementary allocations or these ordinary estimates. What happens for statutory agencies, you present a budget here and its noted/approved by parliament. Once Parliament has noted that expenditure, it means it has approved it. In this particular case, I laid the expenditure and parliament noted it. You heard the speaker say that ‘we take note of this.’ So, it was noted and therefore approved. But it is not a borrowing, we are not presenting a loan.”

Meanwhile, government has released Oulanyah’s burial program. (Read Story Here).

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