Yesterday, theMbale Enforcement received intelligence reports of smugglers who had made it a habit to repackage rice in the suburbs of Nagongera in Tororo.
These were nabbed with 14.9 tons of rice at one of the homes. They had established a shop selling this rice. Unfortunately, this syndicate was un sustainable. On the fateful day, they hadn’t rebagged 78 bags of 25 kilograms each of rice.
As has been the norm, the smugglers took off and the rice was loaded unto a truck to the URA Mbale offices.
Currently, the Mbale team is still awaiting the owners of the rice to start on the offence management process.
The culprits according to Luke Kivumbi, one of the officers behind this operation said, they will be penalized to a tune of UGX 120 million.
Uganda Revenue Authority maintains a stance of non-tolerance to smuggling and by regularly carrying out such operations to curtail the evasive act. These concerted efforts by URA are also aimed at protecting legitimate traders/manufacturers.
Additional reporting by Immaculate Wanyenze
