By Caroline Kanshabe
Internal Affairs Minister Maj Gen Otafiire Kahinda has given the Uganda Police Force a three-month ultimatum to start constructing housing units for junior officers.
The Housing Project was initially launched in 2016 by then Inspector General of Police Gen Edward Kale Kayihura with the construction of 10,000 housing units. The project started with the construction of 360 units at Naguru police headquarters as a pilot project.
Although Gen Kayihura expected the pilot housing units to be complete by the end of 2018, they were only commissioned last year, and Otafiire directed the Director for Logistics and Procurement Assistant Inspector General of Police –AIGP Richard Edyegu, to continue with the projects so that police officers countrywide can have decent houses.
A year later, no housing unit has been added and the construction of the 200 units which had kicked off at Mbale police barracks stopped at the foundation level, prompting Otafiire to question why the police leadership had stalled the construction of the housing units.
“You should start constructing the housing units as soon as possible. I am giving you three months to start constructing the houses. You cannot have a force whose accommodation is not good,” Otafiire said during the police council meeting on Thursday. He gave the force 90 days to resume construction of the housing units countrywide.
Last week, IGP Martin Ochola informed President Yoweri Museveni that the force he superintends envisions constructing at least 50,000 houses for the personnel. But Ochola has for the last five years complained about insufficient funding which has stalled his ambitions and has now revealed that the ambition is to keep within reach of modernizing policing through Science and Technology.
“The UPF Management realised that technology is now the lifeblood of modern policing survival. As we transform from policing a non -non-digitalised population to a digitalized and sophisticated crime environment, we need to find and adopt new digitalized and scientific solutions to policing,” Ochola said.
Ochola said the force must embrace and adjust to new ideas, new systems and new science and technology in policing the population and managing our human resources. Masaka had been selected as the pilot area for the sub-county policing model proposed by Museveni in 2019.
