This afternoon, I came across a notice on the website of the Uganda Tourism Board-UTB. It was a warning to all owners of accommodation facilities across the country of the risk of being closed if they did not obtain tourism operating licenses. The Board gave November 18th, 2024 as a deadline before they closure with the help of the Uganda Police. I have seen headlines that Grand Imperial and Emerald Hotels were the first to receive a compliance notice.
As is the norm with many government agencies, they quoted and referred to the wrong provisions of the law to justify their action saying the move follows the requirements set forth in the Uganda Tourism Act of 2008, which requires all accommodation facilities to have a valid tourism licenses to operate legally. I say believe the interpretation of the law needs a revisit.
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To the board, the targeted facilities include a wide range of establishments within the tourism and hospitality sector like Hotels, Lodges, Guest houses, Motels, Inns, Serviced Apartments, Cottages, Villas, Hostels, Tented Camps, and Farm Houses. They warned that any facility operating without a valid license from the board would be subject to closure and fines.
Every Ugandan is alive to the fact that the covid19 pandemic impaired the leisure and hospitality facilitates and as such many of them have been seeking financial bailout to pay suppliers, pay accumulated salaries, utility bills, taxes as well as loans but the government only helped the likes of Aya hotel and Ndere centre leaving others in the cold.
Since then, many hotels, guest houses, inns, motels and lodges have converted their facilities into commercial apartments, sports arenas, churches and even schools. A case in point is the once glorious 1994 Jokas hotel in Bweyogerere which closed and remolded its buildings into a school while others have strategically opted to sell off their investments.
These are some of the challenges that the Uganda Tourism Board seems to have ignored and do not realize that any hidden costs imposed on owners of accommodation facilities trickles to the final consumer. And what happens when hotel facilities become unaffordable, the customers resort to AirBnB facilities which are more private, convenient and cheaper and have in fact taken over the space that was previously occupied by public accommodation facilities.
Besides the standard taxes levied by the Uganda Revenue Authority, the urban authorities have been collecting money from owners of accommodation facilities. On the contrary, those operating Airbnb facilities are not subjected to the same hence making the tax unfair and discriminatory. Hold your breath, am not suggesting that owners of AirBnB facilities should also be hunted down but only making a comparison that the tourism board is not seeing.
With this level of blindness, I think it is just about time we sought a constitutional interpretation of some of these provisions that are so obvious to interpret yet very hard for others suffering from tax myopia. It has always been the norm for government agencies to misconstrue legislation with the aim of extorting money but UTB has taken it to another level.
Having failed to mint money from the infamous Kiwanda “rolex bonanza”, UTB has now found an alternative opening to contribute to the national basket without any regard to the fact that these public accommodation facilities are stressed and need time to recover. Is the Tourism Board not thriving on divide and rule, ignorance of the law and fear of embarrassment, arrest, fines and imprisonment to push the local Ugandan into submission? We are told some have already acquired licenses.
It is my humble stand that so long as we are reading from the same law, the Uganda Tourism Board is acting outside the law and may need to seek an interpretation of the sections relied on from the Solicitor General before they proceed with their plans. No one, I repeat, not even UTB can invoke the Tourism Act 2008 to sustain an argument that every public accommodation facility can be equated to a tourism facility, no, never.
For starters, the Tourism Act, 2008 defines “tourism” to mean the activity of persons travelling to and staying in paces (I think they meant places) outside their usual environment for not more than a year mainly for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited.
The Act defines “tourist accommodation” to mean an apartment, guest-house, hotel, bungalow or lodge and any other type of tourist accommodation facilities designated by the Minister and providing accommodation to “tourists for payment” “. Tourism sector” is defined by the same Act to includes all businesses, enterprises and activities which provide tourist facilities, including any such businesses, enterprises and activities carried on by the State, a statutory body etc.
Section 13(1) of the Act provides that a person shall not operate any accommodation or other designated tourist facility for the purpose of payment by tourists unless the accommodation or facility has been issued with a licence by the Board. Section 13(2) says a person who contravenes this section commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding 48 currency points or imprisonment not exceeding 2yr or both.
I must say that the interpretation of the law is wanting. A second look at the foregoing provision presents us with the use of the word “shall” which means the provision is coached in mandatory terms that a person shall not operate any accommodation…. With all due respect, this means that if I turned my makeshift structure in Bwaise into a guest house, I will be obliged to obtain a license to operate. The question is, would the Minister upon inspection designate by Bwaise structure as a tourist facility for purposes of tourism, my answer is a no.
Section 13(3) summarizes the whole section by stating that for the purposes of this section the Minister may by regulations made under section 34 designate facilities to be considered designated tourist facilities under this Act. I have unprofessionally under lined some words for emphasis to enable readers understand the steps that qualify a public accommodation as a tourist facility. “Designated tourist facility” means any service, premises, place or thing which the Minister has declared to be a designated tourist facility.
This in my view means that the compliance notices were issued in error as many of these facilities have not been declared by the line minister as designated tourist facilities in order for them to require a tourism operating license. Is that rocket science that the entire Tourism Board and their employees cannot see or they are waiting to be sued so that the government is ordered to pay hefty compensations to litigants?
My understanding is that until these Hotels, Lodges, Guest houses, Motels, Inns, Serviced Apartments, Cottages, Villas, Hostels, Tented Camps, and Farm Houses are inspected and endorsed as being fit to serve as tourism facilities, any actions or inactions taken by the Board against them could attract very costly legal battles in the near future.
The question that the Uganda Tourism Board has not answered is under Section 34 on whether there are any regulations in place and whether or not the line minister has signed the required statutory instrument for giving effect to this Act to enable registration, licensing and classification of designated tourist facilities and how one is supposed to know whether their facility has been designated as such or fits the purpose of a tourist facility.
The beauty in this entire conundrum is the Uganda Tourism Board is a body corporate with perpetual succession and can sue and be sued in its corporate name. A look at the compliance notice certainly shows that the Board is over stepping its boundaries by behaving as if they are health inspectors and need to be guided, they will in the long run frustrate the small local investors while promoting facilities owned by foreigners.
My readers ought to be reminded that many accommodation facilities in and out of Kampala are obliged to obtain operating licenses every year from their respective area authorities. These authorities such as KCCA carry out routine inspections to ensure compliance and now the Uganda Tourism board wants to duplicate the same at a fee.
This is the time for the owners of accommodation facilities to form a union if they have not formed one already to resist these unfair and discriminatory taxes hidden in licenses. At this rate, we may soon have a deficit of accommodation facilities as business owners will be pushed out of business to opt for other ventures.
The few public accommodation owners that I talked to before writing this article told me they were going to devise a means of remaining in the business even if it meant camouflaging. That is exactly the price we pay when we do not research before creating inroads for revenue collection. I do not know why UTB was left out of the planned mergers as it has long outlived its uselessness and has resorted to clutching at a straw.
Those who have read Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” will agree with me that Eneke was right when he said that since men (read hunters) had learned to shoot without missing, he too had learned to fly without perching. The quote is about people learning to devise ways of survival when challenges beyond their control set in.
As the Tourism board is looking for ways of earning some money, they seem to have forgotten that they will receive resistance from owners of accommodation facilitates hence the need to create an enforcement depart across the country to ensure compliance. These employees will need to be paid and will end up taking all the collections from licenses.
Wadada Rogers is a commentator on political, legal and social issues. Wadroger @yahoo.ca
