Busia residents have been urged to ensure they participate in the ongoing census with leaders saying the numbers will determines resources allocated to the county.
Deputy Governor Moses Mulomi, Budalang’i MP Raphael Wanjala and former Funyula MP Paul Otuoma on Saturday urged residents to register in large numbers so the county gets more revenue from the National Treasury.
“To enable our county to have good health facilities, quality road and effective services, we must avail ourselves for counting during the census to increase our population to prove to the national government that we have numbers. Otherwise, our share of budget allocation from the national government will be too small to address the financial needs of our county,” Mulomi said.
Otuoma, who serves as the Privatisation Commission chairman, appealed to fishermen to take a rest for two days to avail themselves for counting.
He told football fans and beer drinkers who often cross into Uganda to enjoy themselves to "stop joking around with the census exercise."
“This is an important exercise that comes once in a decade but beer and football is ever with us. I wish to urge you to give the census exercise the seriousness it deserves," Otuoma said.
The leaders said they were confident Busia population will rise.
Wanjala said he was counted alongside his family on Sunday evening at their Bubango home. He called upon residents to avail themselves for the counting.
The MP said many residents of Budalang'i were not enumerated during the 2009 census thereby portraying the constituency as scarcely populated.
The constituency is among 27 others that risk being merged if they fail to meet the required population threshold of 133,138.
“Majority of Budalang'i residents live in islands in Lake Victoria so they had not been counted but we have already informed them to avail themselves for counting this time round and the final census data from Budalang'i will shock the people as well as the national government,” Wanjala said.
Edited by peter obuya
