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Do you get surprised when you hear huge budgets for smaller tasks by government and it’s agencies? If Yes, you must be a visitor in Uganda but it’s now business as usual. In a quite unfamiliar move, the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre (UWEC) in Entebbe is now now requesting for a whooping UGX10Billion to spearhead the breeding of lions in three national parks in the 2024/2025 financial year.
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The rather shocking request was presented before the Budget Committee as all government ministries and agencies are presenting and defending their budget framework papers for the upcoming financial year. UWEC presented it’s budget to the Committee on Tourism, Trade and Industry last week.
According to the Chairperson of the Trade committee Mwine Mpaka, this huge budget is deemed essential to boost the ever dwindling number of lions in the country. He says the issue is quite urgent or else the country risk loosing on the cash that tourists bring the country.
Tourism requires Shs10billion to start breeding lions through Uganda Wildlife Education Centre (UWEC). We now have 15 lions at UWEC, but the lion population in the country has gone down because of human-wildlife conflict”-said Mwine Mpaka.
While revealing this issue to his colleagues on the Budget committee, Mpaka says, “We now going to start breeding them in the wild in Queen Elizabeth, Kidepo and Murchison Falls National Parks.” Further elaborating the plan that the tourism ministry will set up different facilities for breeding.
“So, the ministry requires money to set up different facilities within the national parks where we are going to be breeding and releasing them. For example, whenever we have enough, we can release five at ago into the wild just to increase on the lion population.”-Mpaka further revealed.
The bigger plan has Shs248.7billion to be allocated to the tourism ministry where even the Uganda Tourism Board plans to spend colossal amounts of money in cleaning the negative image of Uganda following the attack on tourists in Queen Elizabeth last year. They plan to spend Shs4billion to circulate positive messages about Uganda’s tourism on National Geographic, BBC and CNN.
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