The Prime Minister Robina Nabbanja has asked the members of the Local Government Internal Auditors Association to interest themselves in the fight against corruption.
Nabbanja says the government is losing huge sums of money annually swindled by different heads of departments in districts and lower local governments through putting up half-baked projects.
“The good thing, we now have you the Internal Auditors as our foot soldiers, as you audit these officer’s books of accounts, endeavour to highlight the culprits who are putting up shoddy works as they swindle tax payers’ money,” Nabbanja said.
She warned some of them who have been again joining the culprits through asking for bribes and let them go out of the mess freely.
“Government will only pick interest in you and your services after realising how best you are helpful in getting rid of the corrupt government officials. You will not come out to claim for salary increments and other emoluments when you are showing no impact but instead abetting corruption,” she emphasized.
The Prime Minister made the remarks while officiating at the closure of the annual general meeting of the Local Government Internal Auditors’ Association held at Colline Hotel in Mukono Municipality.
Nabbanja therefore asked the chairperson of the Internal Auditors association to arrange his members for the patriotism training at the National Leadership Institute (NALI) at Kyankwanzi so that they can get the ideology of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) government as far as love for one’s nation is concerned.
She promised to ask President Museveni to boost their association SACCO so that they can be in position to borrow money and put up business or boost those in existence for their wellbeing.
Nabbanja said it’s at Kyankwanzi where the auditors will also be sensitized intensively about a number of government programs including the Parish Development Model (PDM) so that they get to know how they work and what is expected from the civil servants who are overseeing them.
“It’s practical to audit a program which you are well vast with. If an auditor has gaps in one of the government programs, that person cannot audit a civil servant who is the custodian of the program. The Kyankwanzi retreat is therefore going to be very urgent. With you, we do not have to recruit other people in the fight against corruption,” she noted.
The State Minister for Finance, Planning and Economic Development in charge of General Duties, Henry Musasizi has challenged the internal auditors that despite the fact that they are deployed in different local governments, government is still losing colossal sums of money in power quality constructions and inflated government programs which go unnoticed.
“There is a lot of leakage which exists in local governments which leads to loss of public funds yet we have hundreds of you in different districts and municipalities. What are you doing then?” the Minister asked.
Musasizi gave an example saying in his home constituency, that the district had constructed a micro irrigation scheme; however, the tanks fell down two weeks after the launch of the project.
He added that though the project had earlier been cleared including the audit reports which did not point at anything lacking in it, when he paid a visit to it, he could clearly identify where the mess was.
Victor Bua, the commissioner from the Ministry of Public Service asked the internal auditors to always interest themselves in studying the payroll on a monthly basis so that they can help in addressing the challenge of the growing liability of the wage bill.
Bua said that after a strict analysis of the payroll, they have come across officers who are meant to get sh200,000 again getting over sh2m.
“We have seen administrators on a salary scale U4 earning over sh4m. We have also got some headteachers earning over sh10m. If you join us, we can be in position to highlight other similar cases,” he urged.
Justus Musimenta, the president of the Local Government Internal Auditors’ Association showed dismay saying they are earning very meagre salaries yet the people they audit earn so well.
Musimenta said that has challenged them so much where the local government civil servants influence them so much based on their poor pay hence affecting their strictness and loyalty.
“We are not having adequate funds to carry out our funds as we are mandated by the Local government act. The challenge of the salary scale whereby the head of the internal audit at the district is at U2 yet we think he would be at U1 yet the one for municipality would be at U2,” he said adding, their numbers are also limited, which affects their effective service delivery.
He also highlighted the lack of transport whereby they fail to reach to some areas to do verification as they are auditing some projects as a result of lack of transport and facilitation.