Revelers will now have to wait for at least next year to enjoy their favourite Kampala Capital City Authority carnival, the Nile Post has learnt.
KCCA Executive Director Jeniffer Musisi Ssemakula has revealed that this year’s celebration has been cancelled to enable proceeds be channeled to providing education and health facilities.
“We agreed with sponsors that the contributions be channeled towards KCCA projects including schools with residual asbestos roofs, improvement of city UPE schools and construction of a maternity ward at Kiswa health centre,”Musisi said on Wednesday.
“This year we shall not have parties and merry making as it has been for the past six years. We decided to dedicate contributions for corporate social responsibility.”
The seventh Kampala City carnival was launched in June and was set for October 2.
Started seven years ago, the Kampala city carnival was introduced to bring together people of all walks of life to enjoy achievements by Uganda’s capital as well as enjoying the diverse cultures that the city enjoys.
The event has grown from 800,000 revelers to over four million people from not only Uganda but also neighboring countries and other continents according to KCCA’s statistics for last year’s event.
Asked whether they had decided to abandon their goal of bringing together people from all walks of life, the KCCA Executive Director said they had decided to do something different this time round.
“The objective of KCCA is to improve service delivery for the people of Kampala. We realized it is the same people who come to the carnival that come to our health centres and send their children to our public schools. We had to do something for them.”
“We love and enjoy festivities but we had to choose our priorities. We realized our people can this year benefit from investment into facilities that serve them as a group,”Musisi said.
According to Musisi, they use over shs500 million to organize the carnival but noted that they had decided to divert the money for corporate social responsibility.
She cited an example of the six KCCA schools that require replacement of asbestos roofs with iron sheets to a tune of shs1.9 billion.
Musisi also noted that KCCA health centres all over the city handle over 400 deliveries per week, adding that construction of a maternity ward at Kiswa Health centre would benefit many people in the city.
She added that all the 79 KCCA schools will benefit from the money contributed by sponsors of the Kampala City carnival.
“Those who had already paid for stalls can come with receipts for a refund but if they wish, they can donate that money to go for KCCA projects.”