Woman MP for Kassanda District Flavia Nabagabe while appearing on a political talk show on Saturday morning defended the Parliaments decision to dish out 200M shillings to each MP to buy a car by saying that she did not prevent any Ugandan from standing in the last elections and the car money is a statutory benefit for all those who emerge victorious.
The decision by Opposition MPs to accept this money has led to uproar among the public who deem the expenditure wanton and insensitive given the challenges the country is going through at the moment.
This is after it was revealed that the money could easily be used to buy covid19 vaccines for 7.2M Ugandans at a time when the government is struggling to raise the funds for the effort.
Other NUP MPs have justified the decision to accept the money by saying that the government would not put to any other use if they returned it to the central reserves.
The Chief Whip of the NUP in the meantime has called upon the party’s MPs to use part of the money to finance party activities by donating part of it to the secretariat.
Other NUP MPs like Muhamed Ssegirinya have said that he will use the money to extend relief services to people in his constituency.
Even the Chairman of COSASE Joel Ssenyonyi has indicted that he will use his share of the money for the same even though his role stipulates that he checks that money given out by government is used for the exact purposes as it is meant to achieve and not diverted.
There was expectation that the new breed of MPs brought by the NUP would stand up against such wasteful expenditure by Parliament however this is quickly dying out as they are demonstrating that they are no different from other opposition MPs before them who are quick to criticize government while at the same timing doing the opposite of what they preach.
Forum for Democratic Change, formerly the largest opposition party has criticized the decision by members of the Opposition to accept this money owing to the large size of the August house saying that money for cars should have been deducted from their allowances and not the consolidated fund.
