The Opposition Uganda People’s Congress Party has vehemently opposed the selection criteria which the government says it will use to identify the beneficiaries of the proposed covid-19 cash handout.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Rt. Hon. Robinna Nabanja told the media in Kampala that a sub-committee of the covid-19 task force is developing selection criteria to identify the beneficiaries but quickly pointed out that the beneficiaries of the cash package will be mostly the urban poor who have never received UGX 500,000 (Five hundred thousand shillings) in their mobile money wallets.
According to Nebanja, other categories of people to benefit from the cash package will include the taxi touts, Boda Bodas, people living with HIV/Aids, single mothers amongst others.
In a press statement released Wednesday afternoon by the UPC Party Spokesperson Sharon Arach Oyat, UPC opposes this move on grounds that the lockdown has made a number of people vulnerable.
Arach now wants the government to consider whoever has been affected by this lockdown as a beneficiary for the government hand-out.
She also prays that the money benefits everyone who has been enlisted rather than being swindled as it has been reported in the past in the various media outlets.
Arach also decried the increasing lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for the medical personnel a reason she says has contributed to the high numbers of infections amongst the medical workers urging the government to put most or all of its efforts in the health sector to ensure that the battle is won.
Following the upsurge in the number of cases, President Yoweri Kaguta Tibuhaburwa Museveni last Friday evening announced new lockdown restrictions which will last for a period of 42 days.
The measures included, closure of schools and higher institutions of learning, ban on public and private transport amongst others.
