Rebecca Kadaga, the Speaker of Parliament has stuck to her guns and
blocked the contract that would see the government through the
Parliament pay the Over the Top (OTT)tax for the MPs.
Parliament had made a deal with MTN Uganda to pay the tax calculated at a monthly rate of UGX 6, 000 and provide 5GB data bundles for each of the 458 legislators.
Rebecca Kadaga, the Speaker of Parliament has stuck to her guns and blocked contract that would see the government through the Parliament pay the Over the Top (OTT) tax for the MPs.
Parliament had made a deal with MTN Uganda to pay the tax calculated at a monthly rate of UGX 6, 000 and provide 5GB data bundles for each of the 458 legislators.
According to the Monitor, bid documents, up to UGX 198 million would be spent on the packages, for which MTN Uganda had won the bid. There was a huge public out-cry on this plan as it depicted Members of Parliament as selfishness by evading the same tax they imposed on Ugandans.
The Speaker has assured journalists today that each MPs must be in position to pay their individual taxes, and that she has directed the clerk to Parliament to cancel the contract for the provision of OTT and Data services to MPs. She said,
On OTT, there’s nothing to negotiate. I told the clerk we are not going to accept people paying for our OTT. We should pay it ourselves and there’s no debate on that issue as far as I’m concerned.
MPs who defended this expenditure said that it’s a way of facilitating work that requires online presence for Members of Parliament. They said that the iPads that were given to the members require active data services to be functioning.
On May 30th, 2018, the parliament of Uganda approved the OTT (social media tax) that requires every social media user to pay UGX 200 daily to access over the top services mostly social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram among others.
The Tax was first suggested by President Yoweri Museveni in a letter to the ministry of Finance and was later passed by parliament in the excise duty amendment alongside a tax on Mobile Money Transactions.
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