There seems to be light at the end of the tunnel after the Minister of Internal Affairs Maj Gen Kahinda Otafiire gave fresh directives to the Permanent Secretary in regards the accommodation of police officers.

“I want the housing project for police, prisons, immigration to be done faster. I want this project to commence once and be done quickly. I want this thing resolved in less than three months. You can’t milk a cow unless you feed it. Feed the cow and then you can start milking it,” Gen Otafiire said on Friday.

He was speaking during a meeting of the Police Authority at the Ministry of Internal Affairs headquarters in Kampala.

Otafiire recently said government was considering entering into a Private-public partnership which would help them to construct houses for the police and prisons staff.

On Friday, the minister noted that the Ministry of Finance gave them a greenlight to use the pre-financing method.

He directed the ministry permanent secretary, Lt Gen Joseph Musanyufu to speed up the process of acquiring companies to construct the houses.

“You(Permanent Secretary) recently told me you are working on prisons and immigration. Please do it faster.  I also want police to be considered. We have made an arrangement with Ministry of Finance to invite people to houses for police, prisons and immigration. The permanent secretary has found it prudent to have a joint working team instead of having separate teams so we use the same contractors to ensure the job is done faster,” Otafiire said.

The minister said what he is asking for is not too much to be achieved.

“Why do you say he(Permanent Secretary) can’t do it in three months? Do you want to discourage him? Let him first try in three months and if it doesn’t work, we see what to do.”

Accommodation problem

With a strength of 54000, police needs at least 33000 housing units to cater for its personnel around the country since the current houses were built during colonial time.

On the other hand, many officers sleep in uniports, many of which are dilapidated and need repairs.

The force recently opened 420 new apartments for officers at Naguru police headquarters but these are just a drop in the ocean .

Of the 54000 police personnel, at least 12000 stay and work in the greater Kampala Metropolitan Area but most of these have to either sleep in barracks which have dilapidated houses and uniports or rent outside the barracks.

It has been argued by many that the poor state of housing for officers affects the way they carry out their work since they sleep badly.

Minister Otafiire couldn’t not agree more.

“…but now you can’t say this officer has arrived late at work. The man works at Jinja road(police station) but  sleeps in some village in Bweyogerere  where there is traffic jam. How do you reprimand this person for coming late?  .. but if the fellow was living around Jinja road and comes 15 minutes late, I would hold him responsible. However, this man sleeps in Bweyogerere or in Mbalala where the houses are affordable. The fellow arrives at mid-day and has to leave at 3pm to beat traffic jam. The man comes from far and you can’t reprimand him. Because you can’t reprimand him, the work is not done,” Otafiire said.

“Once I have worked on promotions, housing and salaries, then I can start dismissing people who don’t do their job well.”