By Otai James
A section of opposition Members of Parliament has been barred from accessing the Lubowa Specialized Hospital construction site, just three months after parliament approved Shs2.7 billion to the Ministry of Health for the supervision works at the facility.
The MPs led by the Leader of Opposition, Joel Ssenyonyi had gone to assess the progress of the construction works but were blocked by police officers on the basis that they had no clearance from the Inspector General of Police (IGP).
Ssenyonyi defended the opposition’s decision to visit the site, noting that government has invested a lot of money in the project.
“Clearly this shows that there is nothing going on here. All the billions of shillings that are pumped into Lubowa Hospital, there is nothing. When we came, we heard them slashing. Clearly, there is just a bush in there no hospital,” Ssenyonyi said.
Jinja West MP, Timothy Batuwa described the actions by security forces as illegal and called for the prosecution of individuals involved in blocking Parliament from carrying out its constitutional mandate.
However last year in January 2023, Charles Ayume, the chairperson of Parliament’s Health Committee asked the government to pause funding for the construction of Lubowa Specialised Hospital due to the sky-rocketing public debt that was recently revealed to have hit Shs 97 trillion, and instead focus on smaller critical infrastructure projects in the health sector.