By John V Sserwaniko
The accountability committees of Parliament have let down the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) in far as the fight against corruption is concerned. This is according to Deputy Speaker Jacob Oulanyah who says the ineptness of the accountability committees, all of them led by the opposition, has resulted into backlog of work whereby many of the OAG reports haven’t been conclusively considered. Oulanyah says this failure to reciprocate the good work by the OAG is inexcusable. Speaking during the Thursday accountability sector joint annual review workshop opening ceremony at Speke Resort Munyonyo where he represented his boss Rebecca Kadaga, Oulanyah said it was wrong strategy for the committees to insist on interrogating everything raised in Auditor General John Muwanga’s annual audit reports because in the end efforts get scattered and nothing gets to be conclusively handled. “The Auditor General does a good job and bring his reports to us on time but there is a lot of backlog in Parliament. Hon Reagan Okumu there is my witness. He chairs the Public Accounts Committee on local governments. The accountability committees want to interrogate every query raised in the Auditor General’s report. Even a head teacher in Omollo being queried for Shs200,000; they want to go there and look at it instead of going for those queries involving billions,” said Oulanyah who State Finance Minister David Bahati commended for keeping time and arriving earlier than the organizers. “I think going forward the committees should set a threshold of the queries they want to follow up. They should pursue the big ones and the small ones will fear once the big ones are decisively tackled.” Oulanyah, who made it clear Kadaga delegated him without any specific message, carried on to say: “If you want to go shaking everybody as an accountability committee, you will end up shaking nobody.” He said because the committees want to follow up every query, by the time the reports are ready for consideration by the plenary “the momentum has already been lost because we get to discuss the reports after 5 years and the thing doesn’t make any sense anymore.” He said it was high time “we regrouped and see what to do better and differently.” He also encouraged representatives of the 21 MDAs comprising the accountability sector to use the retreat to speak their mind freely for the betterment of service delivery. “This review meeting is the best place for people to speak their mind because you can’t speak on radio or to newspapers as a civil servant and you don’t get problems.” He was speaking during a session that had Assistant Auditor General Keto Kayemba, David Bahati and Accountant General Lawrence Semakula as some of the panelists. DPP Mike Chibita, who urged accountability sector agencies to encourage internal staff complaints mechanism as a way of getting feedback information to better the way they manage their agencies, was the key note speaker for the session which had KCCA’s Peter Kauju and UFZA’s Doreen Kembabazi as the co-MCs.
OKUMU RESPONDS;
Regan Okumu, who was to later chair a panel discussion on budget execution & accounting thematic areas, addressed reporters after the Oulanyah session and defended his and other accountability committees. The Aswa County MP, who is also one of the 4 FDC Vice Presidents, put the blame on the quality of reports they get from the OAG. He also said the general public itself has clearly lost confidence in the OAG as seen in increased “shocking information being volunteered to us through whistle blowing.” He said even themselves as committees these days prefer to act expeditiously on the whistle blower information than the contents of the OAG reports. He gave the example of the Shs6bn shared out as handshake to public officials saying “that came from whistle blowing as opposed to OAG reports.” He said the information by the whistle blower leading to the handshake investigations by COSASE was far more helpful in strengthening Parliament’s oversight work than things that always come through the OAG’s reports. He said the OAG was obsessed with “covering thematic areas as opposed to looking at things in the bigger picture approach.” To illustrate his point on low quality reports by OAG sometimes, Okumu gave a recent example of Rukungiri where the OAG report raised a query regarding mismanagement of one of the health centers and attributed blame to both the Municipality and district local government. This, he said, left the committee confused as to who to pin because of the ambiguity the OAG report created. He said even where accountability committees have done their work, they are always led down by the executive failure to act decisively. “We have for instance done our part but the government hasn’t come back to us with the treasury memorandum which should show the progress made on implementing our recommendations. Which steps have they taken to reprimand the culprits we have identified as a committee?” wondered Okumu who has been MP since 1996. He also blamed CIID and DPP for often letting them down. “We have for instance 98 cases recommended for prosecution but it seems the DPP fears to prosecute certain cases. We have CIID officers in our committee and they are always there collecting a lot of information.
We don’t know what they do with it. Why should the DPP not act on the files before him?” Chibita, who was within spitting distance from where Okumu was addressing reporters, denied responsibility. “Before you take what the honorable Member of Parliament is saying for gospel truth, why don’t you ask CIID how many cases have they forwarded to the DPP? We would then tell you what we have done and failed to do,” Chibita told this news website on the sidelines of the retreat. Okumu also said as an act of transparency and synergy-building, he sometime back wrote inviting both the IGG and DPP to designate officers to sit in his committee sessions on watching brief to enable the two agencies follow the course of events in the committee. “The IGG immediately responded but the DPP we are still waiting. All this shows the DPP is ill-intentioned and is undermining the fight against corruption. There is actually a lot of connivance in that office,” Okumu said without elaborating. Speaking later on, in the afternoon session chaired by Okumu, OAG’s Keto Kayemba said the Treasury Memorandum was being worked on and would be out anytime soon. Apparently, government did its part and sent it to OAG whereafter parliament is supposed to be updated. Keto regretted the delay in having it out and blamed this on the fact that the OAG is inadequately staff amidst lots of work and very high public expectations. She said they have just 500 staffers and it’s with these that they improvise to do all the required value for money audits (VFMAs), thematic reporting and forensic audits which they are required to carry out from time to time. She urged members at the retreat to reflect on how the entire government can be prompted to rethink the cost of auditing in this country. For comments, call, text or whatsapp us on 0703164755.
