The Local Government Accounts Committee on Tuesday began business with a stern warning to district accounting officers against incompetence and corruption.
The Committee Chairperson, Reagan Okumu told Chimpreports that a new trend of corruption has been sighted where accounting officers choose to delay payment to civil servants and later return the released money to Ministry of Finance after earning interest.
“We have learnt that some of these funds are fixed somewhere and they have earned interest for accounting officers and at the end what is withdrawn by Finance doesn’t go with interest; we are going to work closely with the Ministry of Finance and the Secretary to the Treasury to see that we put such officials to account and must vomit all the earned interest,” Okumu vowed.
Okumu observed that this is how the district accounting officers have increasingly duped politicians by returning the money to the treasury after they have used it for their personal business.
The Committee Chairperson noted that there is a lot of money that is spent on workshops in form of capacity building which hasn’t improved service delivery in the many districts.
“When you get down to the districts, you always hear of capacity building; we want the Auditor General to find out whether the money allocated to these workshops have really improved services,” Okumu noted.
Okumu added, “You go for capacity building and at the end of the day, you can’t absorb the funds, that means there is a problem, if you can’t absorb the funds within the given financial year this shows high level of incompetence and this is also part of corruption.”
“A lot of money goes into workshops and there is now connivance between hotel and government agencies, these workshops are very expensive since it diverts core funding which would have one to service delivery.”
“This takes between 40 to 50 percent of any funding which is enormous that’s why we want now the Auditor General to carry a special audit to access whether the said capacity building has improved service delivery.’
“This committee will leave no stone unturned, we shall critically look at all these things because these are some of the things that the auditor general won’t look at and yet a lot of tax payers’ money is spent in the same,” Okumu vowed.
Okumu noted that all accounting officers will be invited for a meeting in Kampala to acquaint them with what is expected out of them by the committee.
He also that the Committee unlike the previous members will focus their mode of operation on the 9 audit regions of Arua, Gulu, Soroti, Mbale, Masaka, Jinja, Kampala, Mbarara and Fort portal and will get down to the grass root after a challenge has arisen.