SIR— With reference to the article in The New Vision of February 26, page 8, titled “EDF nullifies Pallisa tenders”, I would like to bring officially to your attention that I did not speak to your reporter, Mr Nathan Etengu, whereas the article gives clearly the impression that Etengu got his information from me (‘Raijmakers said’; he said’; etc).


Etengu stated that he got his information from a letter given to him by the district. If this is the case, he should have made reference to this letter or the district authorities. The question remains of course how and why Etengu got access to a letter from MPP to the district while the issue of the MPP tenders has not yet been discussed in the committees of Pallisa Council.

From a highly respected newspaper as The New Vision, I would have expected a sound verification by the editor of the sources of information,
in particular of journalists operating up-country. It is not the first time that MPP staff are wrongly quoted, which is worrying us, because of the risk of providing wrong information to the Ugandan public.

The article also contains several wrong statements, which could have been avoided if Mr. Etengu, in the spirit and approach of professional journalism, would have contacted the district authorities for comments, or approached MPP for real comments.

The header refers to EDF whereas it regards operations
of the Microprojects Programme.
We have not nullified Pallisa tenders. In fact we gave
a ‘no objection’ to eight
contracts and advised
projects.

The district has
the freedom to award
the 11 contracts in question; but without our ‘no objection’, funding will have to be secured from another source other than MPP.

The statement on ‘timely implementation of the project’s as a condition is completely out of context as well as
reference to EDF condition
following LGFAR and MPP guidelines, which are fully coherent with LGFAR.

F.A.J. M. Raijmakers
Programme Director