Money spent on Government Vehicles can change the face of Service Delivery in Uganda

Money spent on Government Vehicles can change the face of Service Delivery in Uganda

By Adellah Agaba

In the year 2012, the rising 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 unnoticed as everyone was concerned about what was going to happen to the different programmes in health, peace and restoration, education, to mention but a few that run on donor money.

This highly affected ministries whose bud­gets had to be cut to match the avail­able resources. However, there is a government expendi­ture that is hardly given attention yet it takes a big chunk of the bud­get if well analyzed and that is the day-to-day running of government vehicles.

According to the Audi­tor General’s Report of June 2010, government was spending Shs100bn annually to service the fleet of vehicles in all ministries. Everyone will agree that this money is a lot – not to be thought about as extravagant spending- making citizens lose faith in government’s capacity to spend public money responsibly for the benefit of all Ugandans.

Looking at the state of our social services in Uganda, it raises eyebrows as to whether anything is being done for the Wanainchi back at the grassroots. As a Ugandan, I am greatly concerned about the plight of primary school teachers, who have continued to dedi­cate their services to the people of Uganda yet have remained grossly underpaid. Most of these teachers continue to devotedly educate children of the rich while their own remain in poor schools, since they cannot afford to take them to decent schools.

In the health sector, the acute shortage of medi­cal personnel has affected the performance of clini­cal officers and nurses in that they have inevitably been called upon, from time to time, to assume tasks that are beyond their competence and which would have been carried out by doctors; leading to disastrous consequences often times. These and many more such mishaps arise due to the lack of even the most basic resources to cater for these social services that are essen­tial to all citizens.

With all this money being spent on vehicle maintenance in govern­ment institutions, it’s very disheartening to see public officials misuse their mandate and dis­regard laws that govern them in ensuring that gov­ernment property, which is maintained by tax pay­ers’ money, is taken care of efficiently. According to the Public Service Standing Orders, all public officers are bound by this law and ignorance of any provi­sion cannot in itself be accepted as an excuse for infringement of any part in the Standing Or­ders. A public servant is supposed to conduct his duties with dedication, diligence and integrity and is responsible for the property under his control or custody.

We are well aware that the state cannot carry out its activities without adequate transportation, especially in ensuring that services reach the in­tended beneficiaries. Thus, the fact that those vehicles must be serviced regularly is totally agreeable and logical. However, using government property outside work­ing hours – and worse still, to carry unofficial merchandise – makes one wonder if there is value for money, especially when government spends over Shs100bn on ve­hicle maintenance. This money, from a citizen’s point of view would rather be invested in ensuring quality service delivery, rather than on the huge fleet of government vehicles that are mismanaged by the responsible officers, loading the accruing burden on the tax payer.

It’s the duty of the relevant ministries to monitor the movement and use of their respective ve­hicles to avoid future embarrassments that could arise as a result of not obliging to the Public Service Standing Orders which is the “Bible” of all public officials. It’s also the duty of every citizen to monitor the use of government property because, together, we can encourage the officials to be account­able to the people they serve. The demand for accountability and pru­dent service delivery starts with you.

The Writer Works with Uganda Debt Network