By Stephen Kalema
Inspector General of Government (IGG), Irene Mulyagonja has called for more recruitment of judges in anti-corruption courts in order to reduce the backlog of cases on corruption.
Mulyagonja, whose department has recently been criticised by President Museveni for not delivering as expected, told Watchdog on Friday that lots of backlog cases in Anti-corruption courts are due to limited number of judges who handle cases from different government agencies.
“The anti-corruption court, where we take our cases has only six judges. Yet it handles many more cases from the Director of Public Prosecution and Uganda Revenue Authority. Government has to increase the number. We spend a lot of time and money in court due to limited numbers of judges,” Mulyagonja said, during the launch of Anti-corruption week at Freedom square.
She also said the department still needs funding and staff to perform better.
“The money we get from the government can only pay the salaries of our workers and taxes. Thereafter, the balance is negligible. So we ask government to increase the budget in departments fighting corruption,” Mulyagonja said.
“We have only 450 staff including drivers and office cleaners yet corruption cases are all over the country.”
On calls that government agencies have failed to implement her recommendations, the IGG said there are ‘mightier’ figures in central government have always threatened her staff.
According to Mulyagonja in financial year 2016/2017 her office was able to recover Shs718million while a total of 2,876 corruption complaints were registered. Forty prosecutions were conducted resulting into 24 convictions. As of September 2018, 734 corruption complaints were registered, 509 were investigated and completed. In June this year IGG office is investigating 4,409 where Shs107million has been recovered.
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