The Uganda Police is today updating Parliament about its performance in the 2022/23 financial year.
James Ochaya, the Director Research, Planning and Development while appearing before Parliament’s Internal Affairs Committee said that due to funding constraints, the police has not recruited for 3 years.
“In that period, we have lost about 4000 Police officers. However, they allowed us to recruit, in the last financial year, where we managed to recruit 2500 police officers on replacement basis. But the replacement basis doesn’t improve our position at all! So we needed to have more recruitments so that our visibility is felt,” said Ochaya.
The 4000 police officers that left the force after the 2021 general elections left a huge vacuum that has exerted pressure on the human resource according to Ochaya.
Ochaya revealed that there were 19,716 trackings conducted by the canine unit, resulting into arrest of 15,927 suspect and recovery of 6,386 exhibits, while 5,784 suspects were taken to court.
“We were also able to import 5 pairs of canine dogs to enhance breeding and currently, we have 30 puppies being trained at the Nagalama breeding centre. These new units now bring the number of canine units to now 88, but that is only 47% of the country coverage but we are now constructing 8 more cannons that means the percentage will improve,” added Ochaya.
