GULU – Different associations of boda-boda operators in Gulu City have disagreed with City Authorities on revenue collection and demanded that the Council suspends their new revenue collection directive.
In a bid to widen the revenue base, Council directed the divisions to register all boda-boda operators in their respective areas and generate revenue from them.
Meanwhile, each registered boda-boda operator is to pay Council an annual subscription fee of Shs48,000, a decision widely detested by boda-boda operators.
The City has more than 11,000 boda-boda operators scattered in 422 stages but only 2,174 of the 6000 operators in Western Division were registered and less than 1000 registered in the Eastern Division.
Raymond Ocan, the Chairperson Gulu West Boda-boda Association told theCooperator over the weekend in an interview that they are still consulting members on the new tax policy.
However, he noted that the Council has hurriedly endorsed the new policy but did not consider factors which include construction of stages for boda-boda, hygiene and sanitation.
“We are not against paying taxes but not until they provide us with shades and improvement on garbage management in the areas where we are operating from, then they can take our money,” Ocan explained.
His counterpart Godfrey Ojok, the General Secretary Gulu East Boda-boda Association has also raised similar concerns of lack of parking space for boda-boda operators in the City.
With a total of 6,000 operators, Ojok revealed that only 2,500 have so far been registered while the majority are mobile operators who do not have functional stages provided for within the City.
“The members are still discussing the policy but the most important thing is that we need more time as many of us are still recovering from the lockdown,” Ojok told theCooperator.
The two Division Mayors, Geoffrey Otim and Patrick Oola Lumumba urged City authorities to engage the associations before the implementation.
On Monday, the City Town Clerk Moses Otimong was out of office and did not pick up repeated phone calls over the matter.
The Senior Principal Auditor, Geoffrey Oyoo who was in office declined to speak, arguing that he has no legal mandate or delegation to respond to the concern.
However, with more than 12,000 boda boda operators, the City can potentially generate nearly Shs 600 million from the associations as revenue.
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