The Government is planning to recruit a total of 10,000 Police officers as part of preparations for the 2021 general elections According to the budget ministerial policy statement for the internal affairs ministry, the Police plans to embark on the first phase of recruiting 5,000 Police constables next month and the remaining 5,000 will be recruited next year.
In the budget ministerial policy statement for the defense sector, the Government is also planning to recruit another 3,000 soldiers to beef up the country’s security. Recently, the Government also recruited over 10,000 Local Defence Units (LDUs) to beef up security, especially in the greater Kampala areas.
The defense sector has also been allocated an extra sh1.9 trillion in its budget, which the state minister for veteran affairs, Bright Rwamirama, said is meant to prepare the country to contain security threats that have been identified.
This has increased the budget for defense from sh1.5 trillion to a total of sh3.4 trillion in the revised budget estimates for the next financial year. The efforts imply that security related expenditures will be prioritized in the 2019/2020 national budget. According to the internal affairs budget ministerial statement, the budget for Police has been increased by sh51.6b from sh765.9b allocated in 2018/2019 financial to sh819.5b allocated in the next financial year.
Whereas the finance ministry has allocated the Police sh819.5, the force had requested for a total budget of sh1.3 trillion. The internal affairs ministry, proposed that in the 2019/2020 national budget salaries for the least paid Police officer be increased from the current sh400,000 to sh600,000. However, the proposal is reflected as one of the unfunded priorities.
The statement also indicates that the Police is struggling with a debt of sh160b it owes the various entities, which supplied it with goods and services including sh34b as debt on food consumed and sh30b in electricity bills.
The internal affairs ministry raised a concern that the Police is greatly underfunded in terms of the money required by Crime Investigation Department (CID) to carry out investigations. According to the budget documents, whereas CID requires sh84b for investigations annually, it has been allocated only sh9b.
The Government has planned to recruit 2,000 personnel into CID annually for the next five years to improve government’s capacity to investigate crimes. The statement indicates that due to poor remuneration, the rate of turnover is too high with an average of 1,000 deserting annually. In 2017, 1,047 police officers are reported to have deserted the Police.
