Police will this week expand operations on the illegal use of military uniforms across the country. The operation begun last week when police raided National Unity Platform party head office in Kamwokya and confiscated several uniforms.
Police also hit down town where such clothes were confiscated from traders that were found selling them. These include berets, camouflage clothes and military-like boots.
While addressing a press conference in Kampala this morning, Police spokesperson Fred Enanga said they are expanding the operations to all parts of the country starting this week.
“The operations will still be targeting the illegal manufacture, supply, distribution, selling and use of uniforms that are owned and patented by the armed forces across the country” Enanga said.
He noted that the first operation which he calls successful resulted into 81 arrests and several recoveries of materials including berets, resembling those of the armed forces, pips, and uniforms similar to those of the police, ranger boots and 20 pieces of heavy jackets as well as literature on how to counter security.
According to Enanga, police is analyzing the jackets to find out what they were being used for, as not even the police firefighting teams have such heavy wear.
“They were very heavy and we believe there could have been some very serious purpose for those very heavy jackets. So it is something we are trying to verify” he said.
The police spokesperson says they received a lot of positive feedback from members of the general public who are also concerned by the trend of the growing number of civilians donning military wear.
Enanga added that the police headquarters in Kampala metropolitan have received some celebrities who have approached them and offered to voluntarily hand over illegal military gear in their possession.
“We have given them an opportunity to do so within this week, because in our communication of last week, following the earlier warning which we had given some time last year, we had to come out strongly this time. So arising out of that operation, the celebrities have gone deep into fellow musicians and are gathering these military uniforms so that they can hand them over to us this week. We are also calling upon civilians to hand them over to the nearest military base or police station” Enanga said.
He also asked members of families of retired members of the armed forces to ensure that their ceremonial uniforms are not abused. Enanga said the same applies to members of former members of the armed forces who may have died and their uniforms left with the families.
