Make Jinja A Technological City, Kadaga to Jinja City Leaders
The speaker of parliament, Rebecca Kadaga has challenged leaders of the new Jinja city to make it a technological city of Uganda.
Jinja is one of the new cities in Uganda that have come into effect today 1st July 2020. The others are Arua, Gulu, Mbarara, Fort Portal, Masaka, and Mbale.
While officiating at the inauguration ceremony of Jinja city held at the city council grounds today, Kadaga said in addition to being an industrial, tourism and commercial city, the leaders of Jinja need to move further and make it a technological city of the country to differentiate it from other cities.
“When I was growing up, Jinja was the industrial capital of Uganda, that’s what we knew, but I want us to move further, apart from industrial, can we make jinja the technological city of Uganda in addition to tourism, in addition to commerce and other things? I think we can do it” said Kadaga.
She said this can be achieved through improvement of the education facilities among other things.
Earlier in his remarks, the interim mayor, Jinja city Majid Batambuze said for historical prestige, they want to re-boost Jinja as an industrial city but also owning competitive tourism sites like lake Victoria, river Nile, source of the Nile, Ntanda and Bujagali falls, make it a tourism city as well as excellent in commerce.
Speaking at the same event, the Minister of Local Government, Raphael Magyezi pledged the ministry’s commitment to working hand in hand with the interim leadership of Jinja city in order to develop the new city.
Parliament in April this year approved the creation of 15 new cities in Uganda, in line with Article 179(1) (A) of the Constitution on alteration of boundaries and Section 7 (2a) of the Local Governments Act CAP.243 on declaration of cities.
The House, chaired by Speaker Rebecca Kadaga, approved the motion by the Minister of Local Government, Raphael Magyezi, during plenary on Tuesday, 28 April 2020 for a resolution to alter boundaries and declare the new cities.
The new cities will be operationalized in clusters beginning today 1st July 2020, through to July 2023 with Jinja, Mbarara, Gulu, Mbale, Arua, Fort Portal and Masaka taking effect with the new Financial Year 2020/2021.
The second cluster of cities to be operationalised by 1st July 2021 will be Hoima, Lira and Soroti, followed by Entebbe that will take effect as a city on 1 July 2022; and the last cluster will be Moroto, Nakasongola, Kabale and Wakiso cities that will be operationalised on 1st July 2023.
