KAMPALA- President Museveni is expected to address members of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) on Tuesday at State House, to officially open their plenary session in Uganda.
The revelation was made by Rt. Hon. Martin Ngoga while addressing journalists at Parliament today, and explained that debate on the Presidential address will also be subject of business to be transacted during the 21 days the Assembly will be camped in Uganda.
“We will spend in Uganda three weeks, it is enough time to integrate more with our brothers and sisters, fellow East Africans in Uganda. The President will address us tomorrow and we have to consider his speech. We will have to consider three Bills; Finance Investments Bill, Statistics Bill and Standardisation, Accreditation and Conformity and Assessment Bill. This Statistics Bill had been considered for the first time in 2018 in Uganda but it wasn’t assented to, so it had to come back,” remarked Ngonga.
Rt. Hon. Ngonga, who is a member from Rwanda, is currently holding the Speakership from (2022 – 2027), and he revealed that the last time the Assembly held the rotational sitting in Uganda was in 4th EALA Parliament in January 2018 and at the time, the East African Community had 6 Partner States, but the number has since increased to 8 with the joining of Somalia and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), although Somalia is yet to post its representatives to the Assembly.
It is because we have this Article 52 that allows EALA to rotate. In the 5th EALA, We have been in Burundi and Rwanda and in March 2024 we were in Kenya and now in Uganda.
He explained, “When we last came to Uganda in 2018, we were 6 Partner States, but in 2024, we are now 8 Partner States after the joining of Somalia and DRC. Somalia members are being elected, they will join us very soon, they could even join us when we are having plenary here, and they take oath and fully participate in our meetings. We are 63members, each partner state sends 9 members and we have ex officio members which have Ministers in charge of EAC, we have 7Ministers who have to take oath before the EALA Speaker and with the ex officios, we have 72 members.”
According to the EALA Speaker, there are a number of Private Members Bills that will be presented during the Kampala sitting with Uganda’s Blacks Siranda set to table the East African Youth Bill, while his counterpart Jacqueline Amongin will present two Bills on Climate Change and Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Bill.
The other Private Members Bill set for tabling include the East Africa Community Investment Bank Bill, and Pharmaceutical Bill, among others. The Speaker also added that there are 8reports to be debated from various Committees including; Elections Management in EAC, projects implemented by Lake Victoria Basin Commission, and there will be an opportunity for the Ugandan public to petition EALA.
“We will invite stakeholders and organized members of the public to address some of the critical issues that they consider that should be handled by the Assembly. There will be an opportunity to present petitions to the Assembly,” added EALA Speaker.
Responding to queries on how the Assembly is addressing the constant trade disagreements within the EAC Region, Suleiman Shahbal Said, Chairperson, Communication, Trade and Investment at EALAurged Ugandans not to look at the negatives, but rather look at the positives, because there are many nontariff barriers that have been removed, because such conflicts take so much time to resolve, as it took the European Union over 50 years to resolve such challenges on its borders.
He said, “Of course there are a lot of challenges with trade and all of us recognize that there are challenges on the Kenyan side, the Ugandan side, on the Tanzanian side, on every single border and don’t expect that these challenges will be solved overnight. It took the European Union to solve a lot of these challenges and we are working very hard to make sure that it doesn’t take us 50 years to achieve the same.”
Shahbal also revealed that EALA has visited the ports and borders, and during these oversight visits, it has been able to identify hundreds of tariff barriers and many have been dealt with them at the source of origin and attributed these trade conflicts on the different standards acceptable in the various nations in the region.
“One of the key challenges is that, different countries have different standards and when one standard isn’t acceptable in another country, automatically, that becomes a nontariff barrier. So in the last 4-5years, we have managed to know out 590 nontariff barriers and the effort is continuing, this isn’t something we can solve in one year. it is an ongoing thing. The Assembly is putting across a new Bill to try standardize the standards across East Africa. Yes we have challenges, but we are solving them. The problem is that the nontariff barriers keep coming every day,” Shahbal added.
