Members of Government Assurance Committee have been saddened by the many unfulfilled pledges made several government officials and President Museveni in the different sectors.
While meeting the Minister for Primary Health Care, Sarah Opendi, the committee found out that so far, a total of 69 pledges have been made by government officials of which 54 have been made by the president.
“We were asking and tasking the Ministers of Works and Health why there are several pledges not implemented and finding out how far with implementing the same,” said the committee chairperson and Kawempe South legislator, Latif Ssebagala.
Ssebagala noted that it beats their understanding to find out that some of the pending pledges were to be funded by acquired loans by government which Parliament approved.
“Some of the loans were granted 10 years ago but when you look on ground, the projects are lacking,” Ssebagala said.
He observed that the committee will push to ensure that government officials and the president stop making new pledges until the old ones are handled.
“We have observed in the two sectors that we have met that there were pledges that were made longtime ago and not fulfilled while some pledges made recently have been fulfilled; we want to examine the criteria that the Ministries have used to selectively implement some pledges.”
“We are also interacting with Ministries because the budget process has started and we want to know to what extent have they integrated the pledges in the 2017/2018 budgetary allocations.”
However, Ssebagala noted that they have found out from the two sectors so far examined that their biggest challenge is resource envelope
They all noted that they could not stop their leaders from making pledges yet they are not made in conformity with the resource envelop.
The Minister Sarah Opendi told ChimpReports that, “Regarding the pledges that have been made, some have been fulfilled, a good number are going to be fulfilled in a phased manner.”
“For example upgrading health facilities from three to four, it is already in plan and we are going to handle this still in a phased manner between this financial year and the year 2020.”