People waiting to register their number plates at URA offices in Arua city
By Anslem Ojaru

Arua

In abid to reduce the number of numberless motorcycles and smuggling in westnile region, State Minister of Finance in charge of General Duty’s Henry Musasizi announced a reduction in charges on new motorcycle number plates to happen within a period of six months.

However there is poor turn up due to challenges cited in registering the motorcycles as Elmahad Salim Mawa the chairperson Arua city bodaboda riders association says, “when you get the statement of the minister and that of the commissioner, they said taxes have been reduced to half, meaning that initially we have been paying 1.5m so right now we are paying taxes of 750,000shs but the challenge here is the commissioner did not open to the public that the there are some services that URA have outsourced, URA does not do clearance, URA does not make the number plates themselves so it has made the fees to go up 830,000sh.”
 

Elmahad Salim Mawa the chairperson Arua City boda boda riders association
Despite of this, Deogracious Kalebi the Supervisor customs in charge of westnile encourages the public to embrace the exercise as he explains the variations in the fees, “There are three components in the figure, there is the component of taxes which is mandatory paid to the government, there is the component of printing of the number plates which is at a cost of a standard fee of 130,000shs there are two companies which were contracted by the government to print the physical number plates one of them is ABC and the other is GM Tempeco and the cost is the same for the two companies on top of this  the customs deals with the client through a customs clearing agent who is a company and does not operate for free so also charges an agency fee.”

According to records from URA Arua area office, out of 350 who showed interest so far 223 have had their motorcycles registered.

COVER PHOTO: People waiting to register their number plates at URA offices in Arua city. By Anslem Ojaru