The Minister for Water and Environment, Maj Gen. Kahinda Otafiire has questioned the value of the US$25 million Intelligent Transport Monitoring System (ITMS) saying the project added little to the police’s existing surveillance infrastructure.
Appearing before the Committee on Physical Infrastructure chaired by Mwine Mpaka on Tuesday, 13 October 2026, Otafiire who was the former Minister for Internal Affairs said the police was not involved in the procurement process.
Otafiire said he resisted the project because the technology that was introduced from Russia was not compatible with the Chinese technology used in the cameras already installed.
He added that he eventually faced pressure to allow the project to proceed despite his reservations.
Otafiire also questioned the origins and reliability of the equipment, saying information obtained during the due diligence indicated that it was being assembled from components manufactured by different companies.
He said his experience with the system before leaving the Ministry of Internal Affairs was that it functioned more like a fleet-management service than the advanced transport-monitoring system Uganda had been promised.
To illustrate the limitation, Otafiire recounted an experiment in which number plates were removed from a vehicle and taken to his office on Jinja Road while the vehicle remained in Kololo.
The system, he said, continued to indicate that the vehicle was in Kololo, demonstrating that tracking the device did not necessarily mean tracking the vehicle itself.
“So what they are selling to us is a tracking system. That is all,” he said.
Otafiire challenged the committee to establish whether the US$25 million paid for the system was justified.
“If Wavamuno, who is a Ugandan was making number plates and employing our people, why did we abandon Wavamuno and others who are making number plates here to go and import number plates when they could be made here and employ our people?” he asked.
However, former Works Minister, Gen (Rtd). Katumba Wamala offered a different perspective saying he had personally benefited from the police’s vehicle-tracking and surveillance capabilities.
Katumba Wamala said Police was able to trace people who almost killed him in a gun attack in Kampala in 2021 and later see them in court.
“So for me, I am a beneficiary of the system which the police is operating,” he said.
He, however, cautioned that his assessment could be limited because he had benefited from the system whose effectiveness he was discussing.
He explained that he could not confirm whether the improvements introduced by Global Security were connected to the system that had helped police trace the people involved in the attack.
Otafiire responded by drawing a distinction between the police’s existing camera network and the ITMS project, insisting that the two should not be treated as the same system.
“There are two systems. There is the camera system. Its problems notwithstanding, it works,” he said.
Otafiire added that two computers had been installed at the police central monitoring system in Naguru, but that even the IT experts he consulted did not understand what the equipment was doing.
Bukoto County Central MP, Hon. Richard Sebamala said the pricing model required closer examination, particularly the different charges applied to existing and new vehicles despite what he described as the same package of services.
Deputy Chairperson of the Committee, Hon. William Tiyo warned that the country risked wasting public resources by embracing foreign technology without adequately assessing its suitability and cost.
He described the original contract with Joint Stock as “a total fiasco, a total failure”, arguing that a proposed additional investment of US$158 million was intended to address weaknesses in the initial project.
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