MYSTERY SH3bn

Aug 07, 2002

NATIONAL Council of Sports general secretary Abbey Lutaya was left speechless when he faced some tough sh3.5bn questioning by the Parliamentary committee for social services last week

By James BakamaNATIONAL Council of Sports general secretary Abbey Lutaya was left speechless when he faced some tough sh3.5bn questioning by the Parliamentary committee for social services last week.The parliamentarians on Thursday and Friday wanted to know about sh3.5bn released annually for sports from the Universal Primary Education (UPE) grants to schools. Co-curricular activities account for 30% of all monthly capitation grants to UPE.Sh291m is thus released monthly for sports by government and foreign donors. Tororo woman MP Dorothy Hyuha and her committee were irked to find they had the wrong man to grill.Lutaya, revealed that the Ministry of Education is the one that supervises the use of the money sent from the Treasury directly to schools. The ministry, however, does not have a sports department but just a sports desk.Lutaya, told the committee that the monthly UPE grants are much more than the money National Council of Sports (NCS) gets in a whole year. NCS, Uganda’s supreme sports governing body, has an annual budget of sh3bn, but only gets an average annual vote of sh390m directly from the Ministry of Finance. This has gone down from sh805m NCS got in 1995.Despite the financial disparity between the UPE sports fund and the NCS vote, there is virtually nothing on the ground to show in sports form at the schools.Lutaya’s brush with the authorities, follows another retreat for the sectoral committee and the Ministry of education, whose minister is Khiddu Makubuya, last year, at which it was revealed that the UPE money for co-curricular activities never trickles into sports.Education and sports permanent secretary Francis Lubanga confirmed then that the sh3.5bn UPE sports grant was being abused.Lubanga suggested withdrawal of the grant from the district releases. The donors however insist that the money should be decentralised.Recently, minister for the presidency Prof. Gilbert Bukenya met state sports minister Okello Oryem and sports officials and promised to recommend to government an increase in sports funding.

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