By Mulengera Reporters
The top management of Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) has commended the Judiciary leadership for their support towards the expeditious prosecution of wildlife-related offences through the Buganda road-based utilities court.
Chemonges Sabilla Mongea, the Deputy Director Legal &Corporate Affairs at UWA, says the utilities court has enabled them prosecute many cases resulting into convictions and many offenders are in Luzira serving their sentences. “It was a good move and we don’t regret that special court at all. DPP helped us by assigning special prosecutors and statistics are impressive on the cases we have successfully prosecuted,” he said.
Chemonges was part of the UWA top management members that interfaced with media editors during a Tuesday breakfast meeting at Imperial Royale Hotel. The team was led by ED Sam Mwandha and the idea was to acquaint journalists with the goings-on at UWA and generally topical issues in the wildlife conservation sub sector.
Responding to a scribe’s question regarding ways in which the utilities court has impacted on their work as UWA, Chemonges said “it has been tremendously very impressive” and prayed for increased public awareness about this court.
He disclosed that with the recently enacted new law, stronger wildlife-related offences have been created fetching higher penalties (highest offence attracts Shs10bn penalty) which the Magistrates Court at Buganda road can’t handle for want of pecuniary jurisdiction. “The offences have been enhanced and this means we must have a High Court Division devoted to these cases to ensure suspects don’t get away with it because of jurisdiction problems,” Chemonges explained in reference to the Magistrate’s court which can’t hear cases whose related subject matter exceeds Shs50m.
He said there was need to create mass awareness about the new law for the public to become aware and even deter would-be offenders. He said it’s a progressive law which he is optimistic will go along way to enhance the performance of the entire tourism sector. He also pleaded with the judiciary to consider decentralizing the utilities court to regions nearer to where the UWA conservation facilities are located. “It’s true the court has unlimited geographical jurisdiction but there are lots of logistical complications involved in carrying suspects from allover the country to Kampala. We need them decentralized as we lobby to have it upgraded also into a special division of the High Court to address jurisdiction concerns.”
REMITTING NTRs
At the prompting of his ED Mwandha, Chemonges also responded to recent criticisms by NPA who in their Certificate of Compliance faulted UWA for collecting and refusing to remit money they get from tourists to the Consolidated Fund as required. The practice at UWA is to spend the money at source, something NPA sharply criticized and called for the sanctioning of the accounting officer.
During the breakfast meeting, Mulengera News raised the issue to which Chemonges responded as follows. He said the Constitution empowers Parliament to create of special funds and the Consolidated Fund is just one of them. “There can be many other special funds including the one we operate at UWA. It’s a special fund we legally operate to be able to do conservation work. Government realizes the uniqueness and importance of our work as UWA and that is why we are permitted to collect that money and spend it at source. It’s our appropriation in aid. Its lawful and for anyone to bring that to an end, the law must be changed first,” he explained.
On the possibility of URA taking over UWA collections from guests accessing national parks, Chemonges said the Doris Akol teams can’t begin coming in now because government knows the uniqueness of the work and why UWA needs that money to carry on its mandate. “They know and understand why we need this money to maintain our operations.”
The ED Mwandha corroborated the explanation by saying the AIA is what UWA uses to run its operations without having to depend on releases from the central government. That this FY they are expecting to realize Shs129bn in such collections and they will be using the whole of it at source as mandated by the relevant laws of Uganda. Mwandha bragged that their collections have been improving because FY2019/20’s anticipated Shs129bn will be Shs30bn higher than what they collected in the past FY. (For comments, call, text or whatsapp us on 0703164755 or email us at mulengera2040@gmail.com).
