By Alice Lubwama
Bulisa county member of Parliament Mukitale Birahwa calls for investigations into who takes revenue from Kololo airstrip rent .
Mukitale calls for the investigations after the budget committee of parliament where he is a member got information that National Identification and Registration Authority ( NIRA) was paying 53 million shillings to ministry of defense as monthly rent.
The member of parliament however noted that last financial year the budget committee of parliament agreed that Nira be housed in one of the public facility where Government will not have pleasure for rent, but he is surprised to hear that the authority was paying such a huge sum of money.
"Our expectation was that this is government to government and therefore there will be no pleasure for rent, now we need to investigate for how many years has this money been extended, has this money been recorded in one ministry ,initially it was supposed to be KCCA, it became president office now i hear it is defense.
The mp wonders why government should be on pressure to pay taxes and rentals of government to government, for the sake of showing that the budget indicators in terms of resource and revenue were performing well.
"But it’s like deceiving that you have the money when you don’t have it. How does it help the country to continue showing figures that somebody is receiving revenue when actually the other government entity cannot afford." Mukitale wondered
Nira now wants parliament to approve about 12billion shillings for the first phase of the construction of its own headquarters.
The chairperson of defence and internal affairs committee of parliament Doreen Amule, says NIRA needs to get its own home where every citizens should be able to access, since they have always been inconvenienced whenever there is an activity at Kololo air strip.
The mp says that NIRA will also be able to save more than 50 million shillings being spent on rent for other activities.
NIRA was created by the Ugandan parliament in the law known as the Registration of Persons Act 2015.
To harmonize and standardize the collection of personal identifying information of all citizens and legally resident non-citizens, the Ugandan parliament empowered NIRA to be solely responsible for and to share data with other government agencies that may require it.
NIRA is also specifically charged with developing a National Identification Register of the county's citizens and legally resident non-citizens