Day

By Twesigye Aggrey

MBARARA

Mbarara regional referral hospital has secured ‘general type machine’ a diagnostic equipment that can detect various variants of Covid-19.
This machine is a donation from global health collaborative & it will be used to test a wide range of viruses.

By Our reporter

The Directorate of Immigration Control (DCIC) under Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not printing passports due to shortage of booklets,

The crisis according,  is result of overwhelming demand of the new passports after government banned use of old booklets that expired on April 4.

3 years ago, the immigrations department had announced it would ban the use of old passports.

Ever since, the machine-readable passports were declared invalid for international travel and were replaced by international East African e-passports, there has been delay in acquiring new ones.

The crisis has generated frustration among those intending to travel abroad for business, medical check up, visit and emergencies.

Whereas many Ugandans have been affected by the shortage, labour companies are mostly counting huge losses.

Sources say, the crisis erupted due to lack of enough preparedness after declaring the machine readable passports invalid.

The Permanent Secretary of Immigrations Brig Johnson Namanya couldn’t respond to our messages when reached for explanation.

The immigration and internal affairs ministry as a whole is run by UPDF soldiers led by Gen Kahinda Otafiire  as Minister and Gen David Muhoozi as State Minister.

Whereas some other top officials at Jinja road based office denied there was shortage of booklets in the passport office, they admitted that they have a huge challenge in delivering the passports from the day of applying.

“Somehow we are overwhelmed by the demand but we are trying to manage that,” of the top officials said.

Others attributed the crisis to incompetence.

In the past, acquiring an express passport would take two days, now it’s three weeks to one month.

This means it is very hard for an individual to respond to an emergency abroad when he or she doesn’t have new East African E-passport.

By Our Reporter.

KABALE
Kabale District Local Government has signed a memorandum of Understanding-MOU, with the Hunger Project Uganda (THP-U)- aimed at implementing the R2G project, which is intended to provide support
services for the improvement of livelihoods of communities within the district.

The MOU was signed by yesterday by the Senior Assistant Secretary in the office of the Chief Administrative Officer, also the clerk to council, Gordon Manzi, representing the CAO, Edmond Ntimba and LCV Vice Chairperson, Miria Akankwasa Tugume, representing the District Chairperson, Nelson Nshangabasheija on behalf of Kabale District Local Government.  Dr Daisy Owomugasho- the Hunger Project Regional Director, and Gerald Kato, the Right 2Grow, Country Programme Coordinator, signed on behalf of The Hunger Project.
According to Dr Owomugasho, the Right2Grow project, is intended to improve nutrition services, with more focus on community empowerment and advocacy, by strengthening civil society to advocate for an enabling environment, where government decision makers and other key stakeholders jointly and effectively address under nutrition in amulti sectoral gender sensitive and inclusive manner.

She adds that under the project, households and communities will bemobilised to adopt good nutrition and WASH practices, through the use of various Community –Led development approaches.
The Vice Chairperson, Miria Akankwasa Tugume, hailed the Right2Grow program, which is being implemented in the sub counties of Kitumba and Kamuganguzi saying that it will help to ensure that children aged below 5years, are well nourished and are able to access WASH services like, clean water and sanitation among others.

On his part, Manzi, said that with the program, will act as an eye opener to bringing to light the issues related to Mal-nutrition.

A research conducted between 2013-2015, indicated that 2.2 million children approximately 29 percent of children aged 5years were stunted, while in Kabale district, the prevalence of stunting among
children aged 6-59 months was high at 41.1%.

END