IGG asks Ugandans to keep track of gov’t programs

Kampala, Uganda |  THE INDEPENDENT | The Inspectorate of Government has asked citizens to keep track of every government project to help detect and combat corruption.

Uganda on Wednesday commemorated the International Anti-corruption Day, 2020 under the theme ‘Promoting Social Accountability through Active Citizenry’.

According to George Bamugemereire, the Deputy Inspector General of Government, the involvement of the citizen in the fight against corruption forms the primary foundation of the country’s theme this year. 

Bamugemereire was speaking at the National Anti-corruption Conference held at Sheraton Hotel in Kampala.

He said that the Inspectorate believes that public engagement is important in promoting good governance through empowering citizens to demand accountability from their leaders.

“The citizen is the primary end-user beneficiary of government programs or services, which places them at the tail end of every government process. If the service delivery process goes wrong higher up the delivery chain, the citizen is left with very few options to remedy the situation,” he said.

Bamugemereire says that the citizens should track every government program from point of pronouncement to actual delivery.

Bamugemereire said the citizens should be able to supervise government institutions either directly or through representatives. 

He noted that while government connects with the citizenry in a partnership to raise a banner of integrity, there is need for everyone to heed the patriotic call to act in sync across all the superficial divides to collectively fight corruption.

Speaking about the achievements of the inspectorate, Mariam Wangadya, the Deputy IGG said that the Inspectorate created the Directorate of Special Investigation to expeditiously investigate organised, syndicated and high profile cases of corruption of a value over 1 billion Shillings.

She revealed that during the last two years, the ombudsman has investigated 40 high profile cases and other 192 corruption cases in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and 2,284 cases in Local Governments.

Wangadya said that some of the major cases involved MDAs like Ministry of Health, Ministry of Local Government, Rural Electrification Agency (REA), Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA), Parliament of Uganda, Uganda Police Force, and others.

“These investigations recommended the recovery of 10.8 billion Shillings, prosecution of 94 persons and administrative sanctions were taken on 1,245 officers,” she added.

According to Wangadya, the IG has strengthened the prosecution- led investigation strategy to foster effective evidence gathering and prosecution of cases.  She says that this is intended to answer the question as to why apparently, straight forward cases fail in court.

Studies like the Global Integrity Report, have in the past years estimated that more than half of the government’s budget is lost to corruption each year.

According to the 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index reported by Transparency International, Uganda is the 149th least corrupt nation out of 175 countries. The country’s best ranking on corruption was in 1996 when Uganda was ranked 43, reaching an all-time high of 151 in 2016.              

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