BY KETRAH JJEMBA
SEVERAL Civil society organisations are threatening to close their operations in the country if the government doesn’t stop harassing their colleagues.
This is in relation to last week’s arrest of AFIEGO CEO Dickens Kamugisha and six staff of the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) due to unknown reasons.
In August this year, the government ordered a number of NGOs including AFIEGO to halt operations. The NGO Bureau said these 54 groups were violating a 2016 law.
AFIEGO backs the Save Bugoma Forest Campaign (SBFC) and as such opposes oil developments and sugarcane growing in Hoima for nature good.
In a joint press briefing at Center for Constitutional Governance (CCG) in Ntinda a Kampala suburb, the executive director CCG Sarah Bireete explains that the attack on NGOs is intended to compromise the civil space which cannot be allowed.
Bireete noted that the NGOs are considering closing and operating informally.
At the same press briefing, the program manager at Governance ActionAid Uganda Mercy Munduru said that the government’s decision is likely to cripple social services that these NGOs render to the public.
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