Court has on Tuesday ordered parliament to suspend plans to distribute shs 10bn to Members of Parliament. Just recently Parliament passed the supplementary budget and each MP is supposed to get shs20 million.
The allocation has since raised an uproar. On Monday, Ntungamo Municipality MP Gerald Karuhanga and Erute South MP Jonathan Odur petitioned court to stop the distribution of the funds. Karuhanga and Odur said the parliament had acted unlawfully allocating 10bn.
Justice Esta Nambaya based on the petition to halt the distribution
“It is hereby ordered that until the hearing and determination of miscellaneous application no 179 of 2020, the status quo be maintained i.e the monies in the sum of shs10 billion appropriated to the Parliament under the impugned amendment to the report of the budget committee in supplementary expenditure remain undistributed until the determination of the matter,” Justice Nambayo said in her ruling on Tuesday afternoon.
Speaker Rebecca Kadaga said the money would be used to help MPs in fighting COVID-19.
The Members were getting calls for expenses on fuel and it had now become a burden to the MPs. They came here saying ‘find us some money from Parliamentary budget,”
She prohibited MPs from discussing the funds especially with the media
“I want to appeal to the honourable members of the house that the issue of the shs10 billion is an issue of the Parliamentary Commission. Members should not continue talking about it because you don’t know about it,” Kadaga told legislators on Thursday when the August House sat.
