Six officials of Fort Portal Municipality have been arrested and detained at Fort Portal police by the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Criminal Investigation Officers over financial irregularities raised by the Auditor General’s report for the financial year 2014/2015.
The accused officials are Rogers Mulindwa the Municipal senior Enforcement Officer, Omok Paul the Town Clerk, Eng. Kaihura Robert the Municipal Engineer, Mwajuma Kobusinge the Procurement Officer, Alice Komuntaro Community Development officer who is the USMID focal person and Diana Kamwenge the Acting Municipal Treasurer.
The officials appeared before PAC chaired by MP Regan Okumu the Aswa county MP Gulu district at Kitumba district headquarters on Tuesday.
The committee grilled the officials to explain about 15 audit queries that include low local revenue collection, lack of revenue registers, lack of supervision, failure to recruit staff and misappropriation of millions of shillings but none could give clear explanation.
They tasked them to explain the shs65m revenue from UMEME that was paid to a ghost company identified as Banner, which was spent directly from the general accounts contrary to the regulations and that council approved budget shs2.8bn but only shs1.4bn was realized, resulting in a shortfall of 1.3bn representing a 49% under collection.
PAC chairperson Hon. Regan Okumu said that the committee noted that there was deliberate laxity in revenue collection and connivance among the officials resulting to poor service delivery.
He directed the PAC CIDs to take the officers to make a statement at police and were detained.
But Rogers Mulindwa the senior law enforcement officer told PAC that the low revenue collections were hampered by the former mayor adding that with the new mayor, they would improve.