Museveni bans foreign travels for MPs, civil servants

Museveni who was commissioning facilities at Uganda Petroleum Institute-Kigumba (UPIK) in Kiryandongo District on Saturday was not happy to learn that the institute does not have enough funding to become a fully-fledged institute.

He bashed the Finance ministry officials for failing to prioritise the most important sectors such as oil and gas that will generate billions of money for the economy and asked them to ban travel abroad as well as internal allowances.

“Some of them just want money to travel abroad. Tell the civil servants, the MPs and all politicians to stop travelling abroad. Money is wasted on external travel and here Kigumba is crying for money. This is really poor planning,” the President said.

The President said the move is aimed at saving money and prioritising more important issues.

Museveni said he was informed that even before the oil starts flowing, the oil companies are going to invest $15b (sh54.7 trillion) in Uganda and out of that, 40% will remain in the country.

The President, who was in company of the Minister of Education and First Lady, Ms Janet Museveni, said Government contracted UPIK to train experts who are going to work in oil exploration.

 “So how can you say that you lack Shs8b per year, which I think is $2m, in order to earn $7b from the oil sector. It is not lack of money, but lack of planning by the Ministry of Planning, foresight and wisdom and all that. How can you fail to plan to save money in order to get more money in a very short time?” he said.

 He added: “Allowance inside Uganda, we can freeze all those and do this as we have done previously.”