By Fregence Gumula
Earlier in the week, the State House Comptroller Jane Barekye (at the prompting of her boss Gen YK Museveni) released Shs300m being the Principal’s contribution towards the organizing of Bishop James Hannington Memorial Day. Gratefully, this is something Mulengera News reported about some two weeks back as can be seen here https://mulengeranews.com/religious-war-erupts-in-cabinet-as-m7-admits-favoring-catholics-while-marginalizing-anglicans/.
The memorial is being held at Kyando in Mayuge district where the veteran leader from Rwakitura arrived this Saturday early afternoon to preside over in the presence of Archbishop Kazimba Mugalu. Many Ministers, MPs and other dignitaries graced the event which in the long run will positively impact tourism in Busoga. It will be marked annually.
The event organizing Committee Chairman Fred Balonde declared that State House had availed Shs300m but local area leaders felt the quality of the event they were seeing didn’t seem to have consumed so much money. Some local clerics claimed Shs90m had been advanced to them and others asserted Shs30m had been declared during one of the organizing committee meetings as the President’s contribution.
“See the quality of tents, the size of the event and ofcourse the turn up. This is a national event which is more less a public holiday which the President is supposed to attend but the turn up is poor yet there was an open invitation to everybody. How can we not do better and pull off a more glamorous ceremony with Shs300m? How come we didn’t invest enough in mobilization,” grumbled one of the local leaders earlier on in the morning before the President arrived. “The advance team of the big man have been here already and I can assure you they are disappointed with the level of organization. To them, this hasn’t seemed like an event into which the President sunk Shs300m.”
Sources say that had Deputy Premier Rukia Nakadama, who is also the Mayuge Woman MP, hadn’t been sidelined from the money, the event would have come off way much better-organized than it ended up. See related story done earlier here: https://mulengeranews.com/religious-war-erupts-in-cabinet-as-m7-admits-favoring-catholics-while-marginalizing-anglicans/. (For comments on this story, call, text or whatsapp us on 0705579994 [whatsapp line], 0779411734, 0200900416 or email us atmulengera2040@gmail.com).