The Inspector General of Government (IGG) Beti Namisango Kamya says that his work of fighting corruption in the country is being jeopardized by the court technicalities which leave the offenders to go scot free and enjoy what they have swindled from government coffers.
Kamya said that she prefers to order the swindlers to return the funds they had taken back to government coffers through her office rather than prostituting them big the later seem to be a longer route and on many occasions it doesn`t yield fruits because of the legal technicalities.
While addressing journalist at Uganda Media Centre on the commemoration of the Africa Union Anti –corruption Day, Kamya said that the reason why her office is use the method of ordering the culprits in the pursuit of fighting corruption in the country is because when she takes the legal means things gets out of her control as IGG and in many cases it doesn`t yield the intended results.
The African Union (AU) Anti-Corruption Day was commemorated on July 11, 2023, under the Theme: “African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption (AUCPCC) 20 Years After: Achievements and Prospects“.
The commemoration of the AU Anti-Corruption Day has now made 20 years since its inception after the Maputo Agreement and Uganda just like other continent countries ratified to it.
`We order people sometimes to refund money they had stolen from government coffers because when taken to court the case gets out of our control and in the end we lose our intended objective.“ Kamya explained.
She further said that this explains why the conviction rate for corruption rated offences is still very low due to the technicalities in the law that makes the matters go out of the IGG`s hand.
She also said that Uganda is still ranking poorly in the fight against corruption in the world giving a ratio of 1: 180 without elaborating and in terms of percentage she said that, Uganda scores between 25-27% an index that is very below the average of 50% . This makes Uganda least performer on the fight against corruption among the EAC member states.
Kamya also gave an update on the performance of his department where she told journalists that in the period of July- December, 2022, her office investigated 375 cases of these 6 where high profile case, Ushs 33.2 billion were also recovered in the same period.
The IGG also said that Uganda loses US $ 14O billion due to corruption tendencies and that this is an equivalent to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 43/48 countries in Africa and it also translates to power interruption for 24 hrs every day.
She also on a positive note applauded the Social Media users for unearthing corruption acts at Entebbe International Airport where she said that, this has helped her office to swing into action and she has interdicted the people involved. She also called on the public to help her and other agencies which are mandated to fight corruption through giving the relevant information and they can also benefit from the 5% of the amount of funds that have been recovered from individuals and companies.
By George Bukenya
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