Foreign travels draining local revenues- Butime

Expenses on travel abroad by Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs) drain money and time besides hampering service delivery at the district level, minister of Local Government Tom Butime has said.
The minister while addressing, CAOs and municipal town clerks during a quarterly meeting in Kampala on Friday, said local government accounting officers are always flying out of the country, leaving a lot of supervision work in their offices un attended to.
Mr Butime said besides affecting their efficiency at work, the travels abroad are affecting the funds raised in local revenues because a lot of money is spent on such trips.

Issue
“You the CAOs and town clerks are travelling a lot. This affects work because there is no way you can supervise the work at the district while away on a trip. Travelling abroad is a very expensive venture and all this is an expenditure on the local revenue,” Mr Butime said.
The minister said he has been “reluctantly” signing the request for travels by the district and municipal officials but warned he would be strict on authorising travels while making reference to performance reports.
On the sidelines of the meeting, Mr Butime told journalists that district officials each spend at least $6,000 (Shs22m) on the air ticket and per diem on foreign trips, something he said negatively impacts on running the administrative units.

“Most of the accounting officers want to travel every time. Most of you are always in the departure lounge at the airport [Entebbe International Airport]. I don’t remember the time when as a minister or my state minister travelled with the Permanent Secretary,” the minister wondered.
The travel expenses for district officials is not catered for in the central government quarterly disbursements and such trips are hunched out of the meager local revenue collections.
The Permanent Secretary of Local Government, Mr Ben Kumumanya, said many districts and municipalities are failing to realise the estimated local revenues. According to Mr Kumumanya, only 10 out of 160 local governments are able to raise the local revenue budgeted for.

Cost implication
Uganda currently has 120 district local governments and if each of the CAOs is to travel abroad at least once in a year, the government would spend Shs2.6 trillion on those trips.
Mr Butime revealed that he always receives applications that request clearance for up to five people to travel abroad.

As a matter of exposure towards learning about the leadership and development models in other countries, selected district leaders and accounting officers have been taken to countries such as South Korea, Japan, and China.
However, a minister who preferred anonymity for the purposes of this story told Sunday Monitor that ministers get a per diem allowance of $580 (about Shs2.15m) per day whereas a permanent secretary gets $480 (Shs1.7m) per day.

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