Mbarara City councillors, clerk feud over low revenue collection

MBARARA – Mbarara City Councillors have tasked the city clerk to collect arrears amounting to Shs 300 million from tenderers within a period of one week.

During a city council meeting held recently, angry councillors were told that out of Shs 9.1 billion budgeted local revenue in the current financial year 2022/23, only Shs 5.2 bln has been collected, yet the financial year ends in three weeks’ time.

According to Godfrey Baryomunsi, the city councillor representing Mbarara City North, the city clerk, Assy Abirebe has failed to collect the Shs 300 mln arrears from tenderers.

Some of the defaulting tenderers include; Wood Fix Technical Services for the city street parking tender and Kikona Banana Market Tenderers in Nyakayojo ward.

Councilor Betty Tigefera representing Mbarara City South A claimed tenders were altered by Abirebe and other technocrats without the council’s approval, hence frustrating revenue collection.

“We are angry because the tenderers defaulted and the city clerk did not take any responsibility to either terminate the contracts or tell them to pay,” Tigefera said.

“For Kikona Market tender, we had budgeted for Shs 16 million but we found the tenderer remitting only Shs 10 mln realising a revenue shortfall of Shs 6 mln every month. Even after that reduction the tenderer last paid in February and for street parking, we are demanding about Shs 150 million,” she noted.

“Being an accounting officer let him make a follow up to make sure that all monies are collected to fulfill our revenue collection target,” said Jesca Mwijuka, the councillor representing workers said.

Speaker of the council, Bonny Tashobya said that there are many other tender awardees that have defaulted, thus ordering the city clerk to give a report within a week.

“City clerk, we are giving you one week to give us the status on tenders and we are really disappointed with you. Our roads need to be worked on but we don’t have money so take action,” Tashobya said.

However, Abirebe brushed away the accusations saying that by law, revenue management is the responsibility of the city division clerks, not the city clerk.

“It is true that I am blamed for not reminding my staff but I cannot be held responsible for the inefficiency because if we appoint a tenderer, we assign a contract manager who makes sure that the money is paid,” he said.

Abirebe noted that the tenderers are paying the money and he is ready to avail the councillors a copy of the tenderers’ position as per the speaker’s directive.

However, he noted that the performance of the local revenue collection in the city has improved. “You cannot say we have failed when the local revenue has increased almost by Shs 4.4 bln and we are now at Shs 5 billion but likely to increase to Shs 7 billion in the financial year 2023/2024,” Abirebe said.

The street parking tenderer, Mathias Lugemwa complained that Mbarara City Council has failed to have a city order to gazette the city’s boundaries which has now become a challenge to the street parking business in the city.

“Council should come out and demarcate the town so that people can understand that this is a gazetted area in case of street parking. if the demarcation is not done, this business is going to become hard for us to get revenue,” Lugemwa said.

https://thecooperator.news/mbarara-city-approves-shs-67-7bln-budget-for-next-financial-year/

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