Municipal mayors demand 700% pay rise

Municipality mayors under Urban Authorities Association of Uganda (UAAU) have called on government to increase their salary from sh700,000 to sh5m and from sh300,000 to sh3m for district chairpersons.

Speaking before the municipality mayor's conference at Mandela National Stadium, Haji Majid Batambuze the chairman of UAAU also mayor for Jinja Municipality, said the current salary shows that they are not appreciated yet they ensure implementation of government projects.

"Mayors and district chairpersons should have an increased salary to about sh5 million and sh3 million respectively. We oversee government policies and programmes implemented and therefore we seek to be appreciated" Batambuze said.

He added that local government leaders should be given vehicles for transport in monitoring government projects.

On awarding municipalities, Batambuze urged government to change the population consideration criteria for awarding urban areas municipal and city status and consider services offered in such areas.

"There is a need to come up with a more realistic categorization of urban areas other than use of 500,000 people for population for a city status. Cities should not be declared according to population but functionality and services" he said.

Tom Butime the minister for local government tasked mayors to increase the tax base adding that each municipality should have capacity on recurrent expenditure rather than relying on government.