H.E. President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. PPU Photo.
Faith based media houses in Uganda could be exempted from tax due to the Covid-19 crisis, Uganda Christian News has learnt.
During a meeting with faith leaders under their umbrella organisation, the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda (IRCU), President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni said he will speak to Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) and Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) officials “for religious based radios to be exempted from tax and fees respectively until the COVID problem ceases.”
This was at State House Entebbe on Wednesday.
President Museveni gave clergy the green light to distribute relief food with a condition that they comply with the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) given by the Ministry of health.
He cautioned the leaders against cheap popularity, and urged that relief food distribution should be done on interfaith basis, focused on people who don’t get salary or live hand to mouth.
“We don’t want to make people so lame by becoming dependent on food handouts. I need to agree with you on the strict definition of who should give you food. Even when you are bringing up children, they should never be an idea of free things. Some people are mixing this with poverty eradication, which is wrong. Medicine for poverty has other bigger programs like wealth creation,” he said.
The clergy will be working with the COVID-19 task forces at the district levels.
General Overseer of the National Fellowship of Born Again Pentecostal Churches Bishop Joshua Lwere, stated that they desired to work hand in hand with government on the food distribution because of their close contact to people at the grass root level, in the shortest time possible.
Two more people tested positive for coronavirus in Uganda on 29 April, 2020, bringing the country’s total number of confirmed cases to 81.
