MPs Ques­tion Re­ports On UBC Sale

MPs Ques­tion Re­ports On UBC Sale


A sec­tion of leg­is­la­tors have put gov­ern­ment to task to ex­plain re­ports that Uganda Broad­cast­ing Corpora­tion (UBC) is on sale.

Kasilo County MP, Eli­jah Okupa raised the mat­ter in Par­lia­ment dur­ing to­day’s ple­nary sit­ting where he ques­tioned plans to sell UBC, which has over the past years, been strug­gling fi­nan­cially.

Okupa said re­ports in­di­cate that the com­pany is be­ing sold to a Chi­nese com­pany, which he did not name, and de­manded that the In­for­ma­tion and ICT min­istry ex­plains the mat­ter.

“We need to know what’s go­ing on be­cause as far as we know, this is the only pub­lic broad­caster,” Okupa de­manded.

How­ever, gov­ern­ment dis­tanced it­self from the re­ports.

State Min­is­ter of Fi­nance in charge of plan­ning, David Ba­hati ex­plained to the House that gov­ern­ment had no plans of sell­ing UBC.

“The gov­ern­ment does not in any way have plans to sell it,” Ba­hati ex­plained. He re­vealed that gov­ern­ment plans to cap­i­tal­ize UBC in the 2017/​2018 fi­nan­cial year with a Ugx 20 bil­lion in­vest­ment.

UBC has been grap­pling with fi­nances for years. Last year saw a se­ries of strikes by work­ers of the na­tional broad­caster over de­layed salary pay­ments.

A com­mit­tee ap­pointed by the In­for­ma­tion and ICT min­is­ter, Frank Tumwe­baze, in its in­ves­ti­ga­tions, rec­om­mended that UBC is over­hauled and new man­age­ment put in place to com­mence a proper re­struc­tur­ing process.

@Parliament Watch

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