Parliament will have to process the new National Budget for Financial Year 2020/2021 electronically, Speaker Rebecca Kadaga has announced.
This is in awake of the Coronavirus pandemic which has seen the cases rise to 9 in Uganda.
During plenary on Tuesday, Kadaga said that officials from different ministries will not physically present their ministerial policy statements to specific sectoral committees, but will so through an electronic system. Kadaga says the ministries will send documents electronically to members of different committees who will study and analyze them except in a few instances when a few officials from ministry will be called in for more clarifications.
Kadaga has further halted the work of the Accountability committees including Public Accounts committee both central and local government, committee on commissions, statutory Authorities and State enterprises (COSASE) to allow MPs time to concentrate on budgeting process.
Today's plenary was unprecedented as MPs sat in the conference hall rather than the usual chambers to avoid close contact of MPs.