Avoid Past Mistakes, Pallisa Told

By Jonathan AnguraPALLISA district council has been advised to avoid repeating mistakes and decisions made by the previous councils that plunged the district into financial and administrative chaos.The advice was given by the director of administration and inspectorate in the local government ministry, Tom Matte, while opening a three-day budget and planning seminar for district political and civic leaders in Pallisa town on Tuesday. He said the previous district councils got entangled in wrangles with civil servants and the district paid heavily to those who sought court action after being interdicted. He said councillors should not expect to acquire wealth from the council because such attitudes and tendencies make them breach the laws.Matte warned the councils against spending more than 20 percent of their incomes of the previous financial year for the councillors’ emoluments as enshrined in the law but instead embark on serious revenue collection if they wanted to earn bigger allowances.He said the new development strategy adopted by the Government was that of co-funding hence the need for local governments to collect more local revenue from their areas to co-fund the programmes from the central government and donors or they miss out on those programmes. Ends