The government has committed to release UGX20 billion shillings to respond to disasters caused by heavy rain in recent days in many parts of the country.
The commitment was made by the State Minister for Finance for Planning, David Bahati in Parliament who was responding to a UGX43 billion request from the Ministry of Disaster Preparedness.
Bahati said: “We shall go through the immediate items and the requests being processed we think in the next two days we should be able to release the money to the ministry.”
Bahati however said that all that money cannot be released immediately and what can be done at the moment given the cash situation is UGX20 billion to cater for the emergencies.
“Not all the money is needed now. We shall avail the shs20 million in the next two days,” Bahati said.
His commitment followwd a report by the Minister of State for Disaster Preparedness, Hon Musa Ecweru during plenary sitting on 26 November 2019.
Ecweru told parliament that there is need for an urgent response to 38,000km of district roads, 98,000km of urban roads and 79,000km of village access roads which have been destroyed by floods.
“As we talk ,the prime minister is meeting the team from the ministry of finanace is to break this down as we have broken and the total rewuirement will come to a lot of money ,something to do with about 43 billion,”he noted.
“Madam speaker the climate change is real and the entire country need to rise up to make sure that we do what we called climate change mitigation,”he said.
He explained that heavy down pour has caused water logging in many villages causing huge post-harvest destruction affected population of over eight million requires immediate shelter and relief food.
“Eighty five per cent of the population in these regions and districts are facing severe losses of livelihoods in addition to destruction of commonly used infrastructure. The Bugisu region has experienced landslides in addition to flooding,” he said.
The Speaker, Rebecca Kadaga advised the ministry to involve the district disaster committees while identifying priority areas.
“The minister should prepare a schedule of the priority areas and report to the House tomorrow,” said Kadaga.
Mps expressed their concern over the distribution of the funds saying that the ministry should ensure that all affected regions are covered.
Some memebers of parliament also blasted the ministry of finance for failure to plan for along term noting that the ministry has an hidden intention.
In October this year, the Meteorogical Department forecast that the country would experience above-normal rains between the months of September and December
