In the wake of rampant murders and assassinations, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, on June 20 last year, listed a 12 action points that he said the government would use to tackle insecurity.
They were; installation of the CCTV cameras, recruiting and deploying Local Defense Units (LDUs), finger printing of guns, establishing a forensic laboratory, requiring every vehicle to have electronic number plates, re-introducing the 999 response system, and addressing social media misuse.
Others were; outlawing wearing of hoods while riding or travelling on boda boda motorcycles, introduction of helmets with illuminated numbers, introduction of more security scanners, regulation of the use of drones, and encouraging installation of private CCTV cameras.
While presenting a response on a matter of national importance raised by the Mityana Municipality Member of Parliament, Mr Francis Zaake, concerning the current state of kidnaps and sequent murders of victims yesterday, the Internal Affairs Minister, Gen Jeje Odongo, revealed that the government has taken reasonable steps in installation of CCTV cameras, recruitment of LDUs and finger printing of guns.
He further noted that the question of the forensic laboratory to assist in scientific investigations still lies with parliament appealing to MPs to expedite the process of establishing the laboratory. Odongo says that they continue to work on the other action points promising to brief parliament on their progress as and when necessary.
The Minister said that some of the benefits so far reaped from the implementations done are the successful Christmas celebrations in December, the June 3rd Martyrs’ Day celebrations and the noticeable decline in crime rates in nearly all types of crime according to the recent annual crime report.
Odongo, however, noted an analysis and self-examination by the security agencies which established that there was need for self-rectification.
“For example, we are going to improve our 999 and fixed-line call system so as to improve our contact with the population and our response time. We shall also improve our command levels for both the LDU units as well as at police station level. We are going to improve monitoring of our officers at the reception counters at police stations,” Odongo added.
The Minister also noted challenges citing several duplicate telephone handsets which make it difficult to track dubious callers because their IMEI are duplicates. He also noted that the crime of snatching vehicle number plates is inadvertently helped by the tedious process of replacing number plates appealing to Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) to work on it.
He also said that CCTV cameras are still expensive for private individuals and that the Internal Affairs Ministry is engaging the Ministry of Finance with a view to review the tax regime on this.
Speaking about the new trend of kidnaps, Gen. Odongo said that the security agencies have tried to understand what drives this new trend and concluded that there are certain factors driving it including politics, drug abuse.
He said that many detractors of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party know that security is one of the government’s key points and that they are now attempting to create the impression that the NRM has failed to provide security. He also said that they have noted that there is a perceptible increase of drug abuse particularly among the youth and that this abuse unduly influences their behaviour patterns.
Meanwhile, Odongo said that the security situation is not as bad as is being portrayed and that it is continuing to improve.
He urged Ugandans to avoid politicizing security saying that it is a common good and there is need to work together on it.
