The Ugandan government has officially presented to development partners, the governance and security programme which brings together 33 government agencies responsible for upholding the rule of law, ensuring security, maintaining law and order, public policy governance and administration of justice in the country.
The new program is also aimed at promoting human rights, accountability and transparency. On Tuesday, government officials from the 33 agencies met with development partners at Speke Resort Hotel in Munyonyo to officially present the program to them.
Speaking during the meeting, the Minister for Presidency, Milly Babirye Babalanda said the program contributes to the fifth objective of the National Development Plan III which aims at strengthening the role of the state in development.
“With 32 agencies under one programme, the responsibility to deliver for results cannot be over emphasized. This therefore, requires meticulous planning and alignment of government of Uganda interventions to critical priority areas which we must package carefully for marketing to our development partners for support,” Babalanda said.
The minister said that the formal engagement with development partners as part of the program will now be structured around improving the corruption perception index from 26% to 35%, increase democratic index from 6.5% to 8.6%., increase the percentage of citizen participation in electoral processes, increase the rate of case disposal and decrease the percentage of case backlog.
Minister Babalanda said both government and development partners can agree to a joint programme working group where they meet regularly to strengthen implementation by coordinating support to programme objectives and policies in accordance with the NDPIII.
“It is also my sincere hope that, that the joint program working group with our development partners should explore other priority areas formerly not attractive to development assistance. These areas will be explored and presented to development partners in the subsequent discussions after the creation of a governance and security program development partners group.”
The governance and security programme has a number of government agencies and ministries including the police force, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Defence and Veteran Affairs, Ministry of Public Service, Uganda Prisons Service and Ministry of Foreign Affairs among others.
