By Nassiwa Hanifah Samula
Parliament Approves 104 Million USD Loan For CCTV Network Expansion
Parliament has approved a proposal by government to borrow up to 104 US dollars that is about 380 billion Uganda shillings from standard chattered bank to finance the National CCTV Network expansion project.
This comes after government signing a 120m USD contract between government of Uganda and the Huawei Technologies Uganda last year to install CCTVS across the country.
The 104m USD loan was first tabled before parliament September last year and was referred to the committee of National Economy for scrutiny and was brought back in the august house for debate today.
Whereas the committee agrees with government to borrow this money it advised government to come up with a legal frame work to regulate these cameras since there is no one and that they fear the proposed cameras of about 5552 may not be sufficient to cater for the rural areas as well.
According to the state minister internal affairs Mario Obiga Kania,so far 1756 cameras have been installed in different parts of the country out of which 1310 are functional and the rest are yet to function after fully payment has been made to the contractor.
Obiga says criminal cases have reduced in most parts of Kampala since the installation of these cameras and the parts so far covered include katwe,old Kampala,Entebbe,kira,Kakira among others and they hope to fully cover the rural ares once they get the money.
However,most of the members of parliament have expressed their fear on the issue of maintaining these cameras since some roads in kampala are too dusty which may affect their functionality
The MPs have also questioned government, the rate at which its borrowing and they want to know when the government is going to stop putting the country in debts.
In responding to the mps,the state minister for finance David Bahati assured them that government expects to collect more revenue in the next three years to come and that this will be able to cater for projects like this one hence reducing on the borrowing.
The installation of the CCTVS is a fulfillment of the president’s directive to modernize security by employing scientific methods to fight crime.
