The Ugandan government has suspended the issuance of new car number plates, earlier planned to start tomorrow, following an order by the Inspectorate of Government and the contractor’s failure to deliver the consignment, multiple sources confirmed on Thursday.
The official announcement of the decision, which State Transport Minister Fred Byamukama confirmed on Thursday, is expected today, Friday.
“The contractor has not supplied the number plates in time, but for us as the Ministry of Works, we were ready at 95 per cent to roll out the exercise. The problem is at the contractor’s side, not us,” the minister noted.
He added: “The number plates are not here. We cannot strangle the contractor because he failed to deliver on time. We shall, meanwhile, continue getting number plates from the companies that have been supplying us with them because the Inspector General of Government (IGG) even halted the termination of their licences.”
In an interview on Thursday night, Munira Ali, the spokesperson of the Ugandan government Ombudsman, said Ugandan company GM Tumpeco Ltd and Arnold Brooklyn, hitherto makers of the car number plates, had petitioned over a move to terminate their contracts.
In 2021, the Ugandan government handpicked the Russian firm, M/S Joint Stock Company Global Security (JSCGS), to supply digital number plates embedded with surveillance chips under the envisaged Intelligent Transport Monitoring System (ITMS).
As a result, Tumpeco was informed its running contract would lapse on Saturday, with the Russian firm taking over on Saturday, July 1, the start of the 2023/24 Financial Year.
“We did receive a complaint … about a plan to terminate their contracts, yet they had invested heavily and were prepared to supply number plates until the end of the year. The IGG halted the cancellation of their contracts pending further investigations,” Ms Ali said.
The Ombudsman’s order, and the failure of the Russian contractor to supply the new plates, prompted an emergency meeting yesterday attended by top officials of the Works and Security ministries and the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA).
Officials reportedly agreed that the tax body, which earlier raised red flags over the preparedness of agencies and the Russian firm to roll out the project, retains its old vehicle registration platform.
“For us, it will be business as usual, we shall continue normal customs with clearing new motor vehicles at border points as well as issuing them with number plates [until guided otherwise],” said URA Spokesman Ibrahim Bbosa.
Yesterday’s meeting also agreed that existing suppliers continue delivering number plates until such a time when the Russian contractors are able to meet their part of the bargain, and resolved to seek guidance from the Attorney General, the principal government legal advisor, on navigating contract extension without offending the new signing.
AG Kiryowa Kiwanuka, in reference to the suspension of the issuance of new car number plates from tomorrow, said he had spent most of Thursday at Parliament and was not fully seized of the nitty-gritty of the latest developments about the project.
“If the Ministry of Works has told you [that it is true], then it is because they know [as] it is their project. I am a legal advisor. I don’t know about those technical issues,” he said.
However, Security Minister Jim Muhwezi, who reportedly chaired Thursday’s meeting, offered a different account to contradict confirmations by other government notables.
“It is a lie, the company is going ahead with supplying the number plates as it is programmed,” he said by telephone and hang up.
Highly-placed sources said the Russians claimed they had manufactured the digital number plates in neighbouring Poland to circumvent a litany of Western sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, but that the host government, which is allied to the anti-Moscow position of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members, had their hamstrung their intended shipment to Uganda and ordered them to relocate the manufacturing elsewhere.
This comes three months after a government delegation on a verification mission to Moscow was not shown a single digital car number plate and was, therefore, unable to pretest and ascertain samples would have met the government of Uganda specifications.
The new development waters down President Museveni’s five-year-long efforts of digitising the transport sector which he in June 2018, shortly after the gunning of then Arua Municipality Member of Parliament Ibrahim Abiriga, listed among his 10-point security strategies.
To implement it, the Ministry of Works and Transport together with its security counterpart on July 23, 2021, contracted JSCGS to supply the number plates.
President Museveni was forced to give a five-month extension to JSCGS in March, to enable it to deliver the number plates on July 1.
A batch of about 50,000 licence plates was said to be stuck in Poland where they were reportedly manufactured, officials said.
A sample of the new number plates provided to the Ugandan government officials for review this week did not have the digital chip that the Russian company, JSCGS, says is needed to track the movement of automobiles, officials familiar with the matter said.