The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Gulu, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The State House Anti-Corruption Unit has arrested six officials of Gulu City Council over allegations of embezzling over 200 million shillings in local revenue.
The suspects were picked up on Thursday by plain cloth police officers backed by Internal Security Organization personnel in Gulu city.
They are Denis Okot, the Chief Finance Officer, George Odokonyero, the Accounting officer, George Nicholas Kidega, the former Acting Chief Finance Officer, and Denis Okwera, an accounting officer of the Pece-Laroo Division. Others included Bosco Otem, Pece-Laroo Division Treasurer, and his assistant Mark Francis Ocen.
Emmanuel Bunya, the State House Anti-Corruption Unit Communications Officer said that the arrest followed days of investigations conducted after a tip-off from whistle-blowers.
Bunya said the suspects have been charged with obtaining money by false pretense, theft, uttering false documents, forgery, and conspiracy to commit a felony.
He notes that the suspects have been collecting money illegally from local contractors within the city particularly targeting fees paid at the city abattoir, street parking, loading, and offloading fees.
Bunya says the suspects have been issuing fake receipts and sometimes demand money from the contractors as they wish without reflecting the payments in the local government accounting system of the Integrated Revenue System (IRS).
Two contractors, Waa General Traders, Gulu City Livestock Cooperatives and Savings Credit Ltd were the victims of the suspect’s extortion according to Bunya.
According to Bunya, their investigation also shows that data reflected on the IRS indicates that several contractors within the city are owing the city council huge amounts of debts and yet they had made revenue payments to the suspects. He notes that the investigation reveals about 200 million shillings in locally raised revenue has been diverted by the suspects.
Bunya says the unit has also picked up reports on alleged embezzlement of funds allocated for the road, land, and health sectors among others which will be investigated and the suspects brought to book.
The suspects who have been detained at Gulu Central Police Station are expected to be arraigned in court on Friday.
Meanwhile, the police have mounted a manhunt for two other suspects implicated in the embezzlement of local revenue within the city who have reportedly gone into hiding following the arrest of their accomplices.
Gulu City Council officials have severally raised complaints about the declining revenue collection in the two divisions of Pece-Laroo and Bardege-Layibi.
For instance, in the 2020/21 Financial Year, the city council recorded a 50 percent decline in local revenue after it had projected to collect Shillings 4.7 billion. City officials cited connivance in the processes of collecting the local revenue between corrupt officials and contractors.
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Anti corruption office is doing good job. It is the only way we can protect public resources from corrupt officials. Government should also review salaries of some of these technical staffs at the district especially salary for Cao & CFO
True corruption is not good for the development of the country.
But let us look at road construction and Bridges construction in Uganda. given opportunity to critically observe accountabilities of particular bridges would require truthfulness. if a bridge is being constructed at a cost of 10 billion. how much is for iron bars? how much is for cement? how much is for designing the bridge? what percentage should be for monitoring and evaluation? who accounts for the funds spend for the construction of roads and bridges. Let us compare the cost spend on roads in Rwanda and Uganda in terms of length and terrain or geographical landscape. in fact most roads in Rwanda are on step hills while roads in Uganda are using loose soils. I think our engineers should be transparent.
I still understand that much of the money being lost in uganda is at central government! Anti-corruption unit want to make news to follow small amounts of money at district level and leave alarge sums wasted at central government. How much money was allocated to Nyabirongo Health III and what quality of work was done at Nyabirongo Health centre III compared to the amount released.
Let us clean corruption in Uganda. There is a lot starting from biding, procurement, and implementation all show wastage.