President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has accused the Katikiro of Buganda Charles Peter Mayiga of spreading lies about the coffee sector amidst the hullabaloo and mumble regarding the rationalization of the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) sending it back to the Ministry of Agriculture.
In their campaign dubbed EMWANYI TELIMBA, the Buganda Kingdom has encouraged it’s subjects to engage in coffee farming as one of the ways to fight poverty and joblessness in Buganda and elsewhere in Uganda given the huge investment and market base of the Coffee within and beyond the Ugandan boarders especially in the European Union.
Many leaders have thrown in their opinion and views regarding the rationalization of UCDA.
President Museveni has also hit back at critics against his move to eliminate the Uganda Coffee Development Authority and has lashed at them for tribalizing the issue and also claiming that UCDA was solely behind the Coffee book yet Operation Wealth Creation which his brother Gen Salim Saleh heads has helped so much than what other leaders are claiming.
Now Museveni has warned the Katikiro Charles Peter to cease telling lies that Coffee farmers need licenses. Museveni says what is happening is registration of coffee farmers not giving them licenses as Mayiga claims.
“There’s no license, i had this Katikiro telling lies about that but i sent a message to some body that he should stop that nonsense”- says Museveni
Gen Museveni has consistently belittled and downplayed the role of UCDA in Uganda’s coffee success story, which saw the country last year cash in on up $1bn from coffee exports.
A group of MPs, emboldened by the Buganda Kingdom leadership, have been pushing back against the President’s desire to scrap Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) whose significance he says has been exaggerated by those he suspects have been hired to paint a rosy picture to save the authority from being wound up and its mandate transferred back to the mother Ministry of Agriculture.
Museveni says Ugandan farmers’ improved coffee earnings have resulted from the prudent work by the national research institutions as has been harnessed by the great work his brother Gen Salim Saleh has been doing through OWC.
Not used to being contradicted and vigorously opposed like we have seen UCDA-instigated MPs do, Gen Museveni has even threatened to unleash the criminal investigations agencies of the State to inquire into how UCDA has been expending the 2% revenues or NTRs annually collected from Uganda’s coffee export earnings.