Last month, the State Minister for Ethics and Integrity in the Office of President, Rose Lilly Akello, together with the interagency Anticorruption bodies, conducted an accountability baraza in Masaka, where they arrested a number of technical staff, including heads of departments, who are named in various corruption tendencies.
Florence Namayanja, the Masaka City Mayor, says that both the technical and political leadership have unanimously resolved to instruct all property owners to work out plans for improving the outlook of their buildings, beginning with the central business area.
The city council leadership had planned to relocate its offices to the current district headquarters at Kitabiro cell, Nyendo-Mukungwe division, in line with the guidance by the Attorney General instructing the leadership of mother districts whose headquarters had been swallowed in the boundaries of the newly created cities, to find alternative sites for their administrative offices.
Two years after they were granted city status, the leadership of Masaka has considered organizing the first-ever city carnival as a platform to market its tourism potential and investment opportunities; a four-day socialization event, which will take place between July 29 and July 31, 2022.
The 2020 HIV prevalence map by the Ministry of Health and Uganda AIDS Commission, places Masaka in the red-line of the top five districts with the highest threat of HIV incidence across the country.
Florence Namayaja and Godfrey Bamanyisa, the Masaka City Mayor and Town Clerk respectively, instructed police and other law enforcement teams to crackdown all defiant drivers and force them back to their gazetted areas of operations.
The new local urban council is challenged with a lack of enough office space for both the political leadership and technical departments. The city is currently operating from the premises previously occupied by the former Masaka Municipal Council, some of which are appalling after spending years without repairs.
The draft amendments according to Justinian Nuwagaba, the Commissioner for Urban Administration in the Ministry of local government are necessitated by the need to have customized provisions that can enable effective management of the new urban local governments as well as drawing a clear distinction between them and the districts.
