Kampala — PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni will tomorrow launch the national consultation on fast tracking the East African federation.

The First Deputy Premier and Minister for the East African Community Affairs, Mr Eriya Kategaya announced this at a press briefing at the Government Media Centre.

He said the function will take place at Speke Resort, Munyonyo.

Simultaneously, Tanzanian leader Jakaya Kikwete and Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki are expected to kick start the same process in their respective capitals in Dar-es-Salam and Nairobi.

"On Friday, we are going to have a simultaneous launch of the people consultation in the three states of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania," Kategaya said.

The Acting Permanent Secretary, Mr Lewis Barinda and First Secretary John Mugerwa attended.

Kategaya said Cabinet had earmarked Shs800million for consultation exercise in Uganda. He said the country would be divided into four zones, central, northern, eastern and western to manage the process.

The community, he said, should be people-centered and market driven, and it was important to involve all stakeholders, thus the consultative process.

The objectives of the consultation include creating awareness about the benefits of integration among the population, generation of debate, analysis of views and compilation of a report to be handed to Cabinet and Parliament before onward transmission to the community summit. The summit is composed of the three heads of state.

The consultation will go on up to June next year. The East African Community whose Treaty was signed on November 30,1999 came into force on July 7, 2000.

Kategaya said the government would use decentralization structures like local councils to disseminate information and get views from the public on the direction they want the EAC to take.

The community is supposed to evolve into a customs union, a common market, monetary union and eventually a political federation under one president. The process is now at the customs union level.

The federation, according to the treaty, was envisaged by 2013.

Kategaya said leaders are trying to learn from the mistakes of the 1970s that led to the collapse of the first EAC.

He said there were political, economic and ideological differences, leading to the collapse in 1977.

Though the ideological and economic differences have to a large extent subsided, political differences remain.

Uganda maintains an indefinite eligibility for the presidency while Kenya and Tanzania maintain a two-term limit.

Kategaya said that the committee of ministers of the community ministers was suggesting a constitutional commission to look at the constitutions of the three countries.

"Anybody interested in integration should not be shy about discussing it (political divergence)."

Kategaya acknowledged that Tanzania was tending more to the South African Development Community (Sadc) instead of the EAC. He said it was true some community members were failing to "think East African."

He said Tanzania was charging Ugandan farmers in Mutukula, who had decided to sell their sugarcanes to a sugar factory located in the Kagera region.

He said Kenya was also maintaining too many roadblocks (up to 40) from Malaba to Mombasa, a thing that grossly inconveniences Ugandan traders and leads to losses.

At some of the roadblocks, he said, security personnel were extorting bribes (kitu kidogo) from the business people.