LAST WEEK IN PAR­LIA­MENT (17^th -21^st Sep­tem­ber)

This is a sum­mary of the key is­sues de­bated and dis­cussed in Par­lia­ment in the week of Sep­tem­ber 17^th-21^st 2018.

PLE­NARY

1. Speaker Calls out Non-per­form­ing com­mit­tees.

The Speaker of Par­lia­ment, Re­becca Kadaga, named com­mit­tees that have failed to de­liver on their con­sti­tu­tional man­date to process Bills within the req­ui­site 45 days. She fur­ther in­formed the House that the fol­low­ing weeks would be ded­i­cated to the com­ple­tion of Bills be­fore Com­mit­tees and there­after Com­mit­tee re­ports. The Speaker also in­formed the House of the mag­ni­tude of busi­ness pend­ing in Com­mit­tees and urged Com­mit­tees to ex­pe­dite their con­clu­sion. She added that the de­vel­op­ment of an on-line track­ing sys­tem for Com­mit­tee busi­ness was un­der­way.

2. Gov­ern­ment ta­bles loan re­quest for the Na­tional CCTV net­work ex­pan­sion pro­ject.

A Mo­tion for a Res­o­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment to au­tho­rize Gov­ern­ment to bor­row up to USD 104.0 mil­lion from Stan­dard Char­tered Bank to fi­nance the Na­tional CCTV net­work ex­pan­sion pro­ject.

The Speaker re­ferred the Mo­tion to the Com­mit­tee on Na­tional Econ­omy for con­sid­er­a­tion.

3. UPDF comes un­der fire for im­punity and Bru­tal­ity against Ugan­dans

Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment raised con­cern on the con­tin­ued bru­tal­ity of the Uganda Peo­ple’s De­fense Forces (UPDF) on fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties. MPs rais­ing on mat­ters of ur­gent na­tional im­por­tance noted that the UPDF guard­ing the Uganda wa­ters and fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties have been ter­ror­iz­ing the cit­i­zens in those com­mu­ni­ties.

The Speaker Rt. Hon. Re­becca Kadaga in­formed the house that she re­ceived a Kenyan del­e­ga­tion led by two MPs who com­plained about the bru­tal­ity of the UPDF on the Lake Vic­to­ria on the bor­der with Kenyan, and in­formed the house that she has raised the same is­sue to the Pres­i­dent.  De­tails here

4. House de­bates fees struc­tures for the new Mu­lago spe­cial­ized Women and Neo- Na­tal Hos­pi­tal

The Min­is­ter of Health, Hon. Jane Ruth Aceng pre­sented a state­ment on the op­er­a­tional­iza­tion of Mu­lago spe­cial­ized Women and Neona­tal Hos­pi­tal. The en­su­ing de­bate saw mem­bers, while grate­ful that the new struc­ture is up and run­ning, con­demn­ing the “ex­or­bi­tant fees” which many rural Ugan­dans, can­not not af­ford. They asked the Min­istry to re­vise the fees to make it af­ford­able.

5. Speaker ad­journs Par­lia­ment sine die af­ter Gov­ern­ment fails to ex­plain the bru­tal­ity of the PDF on fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Speaker of Par­lia­ment Rt. Hon­or­able Re­becca Kadaga ad­journed the house sine die (date to be named) fol­low­ing the fail­ure of the gov­ern­ment to pre­sent a state­ment on per­sis­tent mis­treat­ment, tor­ture and un­law­ful ar­rests and bru­tal­ity of fish­er­men around the dif­fer­ent fish­ing is­lands in the coun­try by the Uganda Peo­ple’s De­fence Forces.

On Tues­day 18 Sep­tem­ber dur­ing ple­nary sit­ting, the Speaker di­rected the Prime Min­is­ter and to make a state­ment to­day on this is­sue mat­ter af­ter the Min­is­ter of de­fense had re­fused to ad­dress Par­lia­ment. This is­sue ac­cord­ing to the Speaker has been brought on the floor more than four times and the Min­istry of De­fence has never both­ered even af­ter di­rec­tives from the Speaker to give state­ments. De­tails here

Com­mit­tees

1. Com­mit­tee on HIV/​AIDS and Re­lated Dis­eases

On Wednes­day 19th Sep­tem­ber 2018, Pill Power Uganda (PiPo) met with the com­mit­tee to cre­ate aware­ness of their ex­is­tence as a Non- Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tion, in­form the com­mit­tee of their ac­tiv­i­ties and also seek for any pos­si­ble sup­port from the com­mit­tee to en­able the or­ga­ni­za­tion reach and help more HIV/​AIDs vic­tims. On Thurs­day 20^th, the com­mit­tee met with Uganda Net­work for Young Peo­ple Liv­ing with HIV/​AIDs (UN­YPA). The ob­jec­tive of the meet­ing was for UN­YPA to seek for sup­port from the com­mit­tee in var­i­ous as­pects as far as bat­tling against HIV/​AIDs is con­cerned.

1. Se­lect Com­mit­tee In­ves­ti­gat­ing Sex­ual Vi­o­lence in In­sti­tu­tions of learn­ing

Hon. Rwakoojo Robi­nah con­tin­ued with its pub­lic hear­ing, meet­ing CSOs and NGOs that do work around sex­ual vi­o­lence. The com­mit­tee was con­sti­tuted af­ter a mo­tion for res­o­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment urg­ing Gov­ern­ment to in­quire into al­le­ga­tions of sex­ual vi­o­lence in in­sti­tu­tions of learn­ing in Uganda pre­sented by Hon. Adeke Anna was unan­i­mously adopted. A joint pre­sen­ta­tion from sev­eral or­gan­i­sa­tions like Plan In­ter­na­tional Uganda, Rais­ing Voices, and Cen­tre for Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Pre­ven­tion (CE­DOVIP), Ak­ina Mama Wa Africa, Ba­hai Faith was made to the se­lect com­mit­tee.

The pre­sen­ta­tion cap­tured the causes and ex­tent of the vice of sex­ual vi­o­lence in in­sti­tu­tions of learn­ing in Uganda and its neg­a­tive ef­fects on the pop­u­la­tion, the ad­e­quacy and ef­fec­tive­ness of the laws and poli­cies for the man­age­ment and con­trol of sex­ual vi­o­lence in Uganda. De­tails here

The Uganda Joint Chris­t­ian Coun­cil (UJCC), made a pre­sen­ta­tion to the Par­lia­men­tary Se­lect Com­mit­tee on in­quiry into al­le­ga­tions of sex­ual vi­o­lence in in­sti­tu­tions of learn­ing in Uganda. UJC­C’s pre­sen­ta­tion de­tailed four Uni­ver­si­ties that did not have Sex­ual Ha­rass­ment Poli­cies and this in­creased the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of both stu­dents and teach­ers. They urged the gov­ern­ment to ac­cord sup­port ser­vices to vic­tims of sex­ual vi­o­lence cit­ing out that pro­vi­sion of psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port and coun­selling ser­vices will do much in re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing vic­tims. De­tails here