Parliament's electronic registration activated

More than two years after installing the hi-tech system meant to foster electronic registration of lawmakers attending plenary sessions, the system which is part of the sh28b integrated security system was finally jolted into life yesterday.

Last week, New Vision reported that some of the components of the integrated security system where still dysfunctional - foremost among which was the electronic voting system and registration of legislators attending plenary sessions.

This followed the long queues made by lawmakers during the voting of Uganda's representatives to the East African Legislative Assembly which saw the exercise take a greater part of the day, with clerks deployed to manually count the votes.

The voting took place in Parliament's parking yard because voting inside the chambers would have caused a logistical nightmare.

When Deputy Speaker, Jacob Oulanyah yesterday walked into the chambers of Parliament a few minutes after 2pm, a paltry 42 MPs had clocked in, according to the giant screens inside the chambers. And the plenary session progressed, the figure shot up to 102 after one hour.

Launched in February 2015 by the Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, in the presence of then Chinese ambassador to Uganda Zhao Yali, the system was installed as an ultimate solution to rampant absenteeism in the House, vote rigging on controversial issues and problems of traffic and parking.

The security system was supplied by ZTE-ICT, a Chinese firm as part of the sh28b state of the art system for Parliament comprising of the electronic voting and registration devices system, electronic parking system, access blocks at all entrances and CCTV cameras.

However, questions have persisted over the efficacy of the much vaunted system that some experts had labelled as one of the best on the African continent.

Sources at Parliament indicate that even before the tenure of the ninth Parliament came to a close in May last year, access cards of a number of MPs had been rendered dysfunctional.

When New Vision broke the story, Parliament's spokesperson, Chris Obore, blamed technical hiccups like lack of special equipment (like microphones and chairs) for Parliament's failure to roll out electronic voting.

"The setup of Parliament is not efficient enough, to make us use the machine.  We are as concerned as you, to make use of the e-voting machine, but we must have a seat and a microphone, designed for each MP, for it to work," Obore said.

In East Africa, the Parliaments of Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya have long upgraded to e-voting during plenary sessions which saves a lot of time.