The police planning and Advisory committee has reallocated the current quarterly release to only fund the office of the Inspector General of Police, Kampala Metropolitan police and three other regions.
The reallocation leaves more than 95% of the police operation units together with the Criminal Investigation Directorate and intelligence without any money for operations.
The Ministry of Finance released Shillings 137.8 billion to the police force at the beginning of the year and the police Planning and Advisory Committee sat to decide on how the money would be used.
According to documentation drafted by the committee, only sting operations under the office of the IGP Kale Kayihura, regions under the Kampala metropolitan police, East Kyoga, Sipi and Rwenzori East policing will be funded.
At least 65% of the money will be used to pay salaries, pension and gratuity and 31% will cater for the capital obligations of the force like utilities and feeding.
After the salary and obligations have been catered for, only Shillings 30 billion will be left, out of which 13.4 billion will be used to pay part of the outstanding arrears of shillings 125.9 billion shillings. The remaining 16.6 billion will be divided between the office of the IGP, KMP and the three regions.
The money to Kayihura’s office is meant to, among others, implement the strategic plan and coordinate sting operations and other police programmes.
IGP Kayihura says this is a new model of implementing operations based on intelligence given that there are limited resources.
“There is no money. We therefore picked the most important areas and allocated them the operational funds. The focus will be rotational and at the end of the year, all other regions will have benefited,” Kayihura said.
Usually, the quarterly funds are allocated and distributed equally among all operational units giving a bigger allocation to intelligence and Investigations. Every district, division and region is given a monthly interest for running the station, fuel allocation together with food and stationary.
A highly placed source says that right now most police personnel in different units are just going to office for the sake of it but work cannot be done.
“We can’t carry out any operations. If you come with a complaint or case, you have to facilitate the investigations. There is no money for anything,” the source who preferred anonymity said.
The police annual budget allocation has been reducing since the financial year 2015/2016 when it hit Shillings 600 billion. In the financial year 2017/2018, only Shillings 533 billion was allocated which is equal to what was being given to the force 7 years ago despite the increase in manpower, operational units and motorised equipment.
