By Spy Uganda
Kampala: With just a few days to polls scheduled on January 14, 2020, National Resistance Movement (NRM) is soaked in troubles after a group of over 200 media houses including Radio, Television, Printing and online have camped at the party’s headquarters demanding to be paid their airtime amounting to 1.6 billion used to promote candidate Museveni and his campaigns.
They argue that after prior meeting the Director of Communications NRM, Emmanuel Dombo many went ahead and did advertising and promotion work for candidate Museveni. Their pleas for payment have fallen on deaf ears.
Some of the media houses that have run out of patience today included; Capital FM, Galaxy FM, Newvision, Daily Monitor, Prime radio, Radio Simba, Top radio. These have been covering live broadcast when the President was in Wakiso, Kampala and also offered airtime to NRM MPs, Mayors in Central region.
“He (Dombo) assured us that we can work as pay is being procured. However, even after delivering, we are being turned into beggars of our own money. I have camped here for a full week from 9am-5 Pm being fed on lip service,” an online media publisher with Online Media Publishers Association (OMPA) told this publication.
Another said: “We have paced all the corridors chasing our money. What hurts me is that an official at the secretariat told me that if we don’t get paid by Friday (January 8, 2021) we should wait for the 2026 elections and consider our service voluntary,”
In a recent meeting with the online media, Dombo admitted that candidate Museveni was not faring as well as National Unity Platform’s (NUP’s) Sentamu Kyagulanyi. He reiterated the need for a concerted effort to popularize candidate Museveni. “Bobi Wine’s people are all over social media and we need to counter them. This is a special assignment for which we shall reward you handsomely,” he reportedly said.
Another angry media personnel noted, “We started airing NRM’s adverts for their presidential candidate Museveni for a couple of months ago, and guess what…whenever we ask for payment these guys keep telling us to wait..but until when…they keep deceiving us that Museveni has not yet released our money yet we are sure he released it… today we have to show them that we are tired of their lies, and we didn’t start up our media companies to breastfeed NRM.”
Emmanuel Dombo asked the media practitioners to exercise patience as they were working around the clock to find payment. “ We are pacing up and down to secure money from the Party Treasurer. We promise that all media houses shall be paid before polling day,” he said.
NRM Treasurer Rose Namayanja was reportedly away on the campaign trail.
