Parliament has opened an institute for inducting and training Members of Parliament how to legislate and debate on the floor of the House, with the next legislators coming in May being the first beneficiaries.
The Institute of Parliamentary Studies in Kampala was launched yesterday by Speaker Rebecca Kadaga whom it is named after.
In her launch speech, Kadaga said that previously, MPs were trained for only one month, but it was realized that the period was not enough to train them how to legislate and manage other parliamentary work.
Kadaga said this institute is to assist mainly the parliamentarians and staff and it will help members to be more efficient by doing continuous training and induction where she added that some MPs are elected when they do not know anything about legislation.
She said if they make use of the institute, their debate on the floor of Parliament will improve since they will be able to access researched data, information and many things from the facility.
The chairperson of the institute, Ms Cecilia Ogwal, said it consists of four MPs who represent legislators, the Clerk to Parliament to represent management, members of the academia who will train the MPs, and a commissioner who represents local government councils.
According to Ms Ogwal, the Kadaga institute will not only train MPs on legislation but also councilors of Local Government councils.
The institute however, is also one of the government entities receiving funding from the Democratic Governance Facility (DGF) whose activities were suspended recently.
