The municipal council is grappling with a range of challenges, including local revenue collections, unauthorized infrastructure development in town, and solid waste management due to a lack of an enforcement team. T
The Moroto municipal council is struggling to implement council resolutions due to a lack of law enforcement officers.
The law enforcement department is responsible for
maintaining law and order and regulations in the Town Council. The officers are supposed to enforce national laws and council bylaws, sensitising
the public on crime prevention, ensuring compliance with council policies, supporting
revenue collection, and preventing unauthorised development in town, among
others.
The municipal council is grappling with a range of challenges,
including local revenue collections, illegal developments in
town, and solid waste management due to a lack of an enforcement team.
Ismail Mohammed, the Mayor of Moroto municipality, noted
that Law enforcement is a key human resource that affects the operations of all
the sectors at the municipal council.
Mohamed appealed to the Finance Ministry to provide the wage
bill for Community Development Officers at the division level and the law
enforcement officers to enforce policies in the town.
Mohammed said that the lack of law enforcement officers has
made it difficult to enforce some of the urban policies. He explained that law
enforcement would help in the go back to school campaign, physical planning,
waste management, revenue collection, among others.
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Meanwhile, Mohammed revealed that they have made strides,
especially in local revenue collection, despite the gaps in manpower. He said
that they have improved the local revenue collection, which used to be very
poor.
Mohammed said that in the previous financial years, they
used to have a maximum collection of 180 million shillings in local revenue, which has increased to 650
million shillings.
Mohammed is optimistic that if they get law enforcers, they
would be able to close the leakage in the local revenues.
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Richard Eyaru, the Town Clerk for the Moroto Municipal
Council, said that they have been hiring police officers to
help them with the enforcement, which is also costly. He added that the police
demand the allowances for the council operations, which they do not have in
their budget.
Eyaru explained that police could charge them money since it
is additional work that is not their role.
Eyaru noted that they submitted a request to the service Commission
to recruit officers before the financial year.
