Government
should disclose the source of refunded money to donors
By:
Adellah Agaba
The year 2012 was one that opened
citizens’ eyes to the growing levels of corruption in Uganda as many corruption
scandals in billions of shillings were unearthed. The Pensions scandal in the
Ministry of Public Service with the loss of 100 billion shillings meant for
retired public servants was discovered and up to now more details on the rot are
emerging.
As if that was not enough, the
Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) one of the most respected offices in
monitoring implementation of government programmes astounded Ugandans when big
chunks of money went missing and could not be accounted for by the accounting
officers. This arose out of the Auditor
General’s report released in October last year with a special audit report
indicating that up to Shs50 billion was misappropriated by staff in the Prime
Minister’s office. The misappropriated funds were intended for post-war
recovery in Northern Uganda under the Peace, Recovery and Development Plan
(PRDP). Matters are not helped by the fact that Uganda’s 2012 Corruption
Perceptions Index (CPI) ranking by Transparency International revealed Uganda’s
position at 130 out of 176 countries with a score of 29.
Not surprisingly the corruption scandals raised eyebrows in the
donor world including Norway, Ireland, Denmark and United Kingdom, among others,
which led to donor suspension of aid to Uganda. This was a big blow to a
country that has a large part of its national budget funded by donors. Mixed
reactions from the public could not go un noticed as everyone was concerned as
to what was going to happen to the different programmes in health, peace and
restoration, education, mention them that run on donor money.
Alas, there came good news! Depending on how you look at it. The
Ugandan government refunded 4Miliion Euros (14bn)
donor aid money stolen by some government officials to the Irish government to
restore the broken relationship. Unfortunately, reports indicate that Ireland has announced that the
suspension of its bilateral aid to Uganda will remain in place until officials
are confident that controls have been put in place to prevent misappropriation
of aid money from their country.
Something the Government of Uganda did to restore confidence in
the donors and the public instead raised so many questions that have not been
answered up to now. Where did the government get all this kind of money to
refund the Irish government? Which budget line did they use? Which sectors have
been affected by this refund? But the biggest of them all is that, if the
government can afford to refund all this money, do we after all need donor
money? It was indicated that the money was got from government’s consolidated
account. Isn’t that tax payers’ money meant for improved service delivery?
As activists we demand that in the interest of transparency and
accountability the government should clearly disclose the source of the money
refunded to the Irish government when teachers are still earning low salaries,
health facilities still in bad shape, roads full of pot holes, and the
education sector still lacking school facilities and structures in most
districts, which are all summed up as regressive service delivery.
We also call for quick passing of the Anti-corruption amendment
Bill so that officials implicated in these corruption scandals are effectively
brought to book, and all their assets acquired from the stolen money are confiscated
and liquidated to replace the misappropriated funds in respective offices. This
way, tax payers’ hard earned money is not used to pay off other peoples’
fraudulent losses but instead be used in ensuring proper service delivery in
the country.
The
Writer works with Uganda Debt Network
aagaba@udn.or.ug
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