A report by the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC) of the School of Law at Makerere University has revealed that over Shs1.7 trillion of the Covid-19 funds (Shs5.7T) that were released by Parliament is nowhere to be seen.
While launching the report at Imperial Royale Hotel Kampala on Wednesday, Dr Zahara Nampewo the Head of the Human Rights and Peace Centre, who also doubles as the Deputy Principal School of Law Makerere University said the report aimed at interrogating the management and oversight of Covid-19 funds in Uganda.
She said that the report is a result of an academic-led research initiative intended to bolster citizen engagement in promoting accountability and stimulate Parliament to oversee the use of public resources and defend people’s interests in times of crisis.
The report named “Institutional Oversight in Crisis – The Management of Uganda’s Covid-19 Funds” revealed that there was a lot of mismanagement of funds since during the crisis District Health Officers (DHO) became coordinators of COVID-19 finances, which was unusual and deviation from the norm where the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) is the Chief Accounting Officer at the district.
Dr Nampewo noted that according to the established local government practice CAOs handle, coordinate and manage all financial resources at the district level, however, during the Covid-19 everything was manned by the RDCs.
“Similarly, the RDC being head of the District Taskforce instead of the District Chairperson, was an anomaly. The District Chairperson normally heads the District Disaster Management Committee, and the departure from this practice caused tension between the political leadership and RDCs and a lot of money is believed to have been diverted in such anomalies,” she said.
She added, “Money was released from the centre some of it eventually ended up in the hands of the local government, regional referral hospitals, oxygen, money for ICU units in different hospitals however we don’t know how much money performed what it was supposed to do. There are a lot of information gaps.”
Dr Nampewo revealed that sometimes money was received on personal accounts, leaving aside the district accounting officers and the end result is that Ugandans did not get value for money.
“This has been confirmed by reports by Auditor General’s report, Ministry of Finance. Whereas a lot of money was disbursed accountability is still lacking. There are also anomalies in how much money was put into Covid-19 management, the Ministry of Finance said Shs4trillion was released for Covid-19 management while the Parliament said that they appropriated Shs5.7trilion, so we have Shs1.7 trillion that is unaccounted for. So for us as HURIPEC and School of Law MUK, we want to put the government to task to explain where is this money,” she said.
She noted that if there has been misuse of money, it’s the government’s duty to bring to book the individuals behind the mismanagement of Covid-19 funds.
“During the pandemic, it was to whom it may concern, citizens did not feel the government, citizens have lost trust in their government because the money that was released did not do what it was supposed to do. It was diverted to fulfil the aims of a few individuals.”
Accountability of Covid-19 funds has always been a big challenge to those who managed these funds, in the recent Auditor General report also showed that Shs1.31 billion disbursed to 17 entities still remains unaccounted for.
Also in his recent report Auditor General John Muwanga revealed that although items valued at Shs55.8 billion were distributed under the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), they lacked sufficient evidence of acknowledgement to enable him to verify the recipients.
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