Stop throwing away taxpayers’ money

Government must stop throwing away taxpayers’ money with such impunity. The revelations in the Auditor General’s report of 2015/16 are shocking and disturbing.

The findings of the Auditor General (AG) show uncontrolled huge financial hemorrhage of taxpayers’ money wasted on unknown or non-existing youth groups, who are simply gifted money without proper or established accountability mechanisms for recovery.

This has made the recoverability of the money extremely hard after many rogue groups received the money, shared it and disappeared.

The reason for this mess is that there is no proper criterion or procedure to ensure the funds are disbursed to the right and competent beneficiaries.

It appears the basic criterion is persons forming a youth group and opening a bank account where the money will be wired regardless of whether the they have verifiable physical business address, proven competence to manage the project and general business skills.

Appearing before the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday, Mr Pius Bigirimana, the Permanent Secretary of the Gender ministry, through which the money is disbursed to the youth, failed to account for the money.

By October 2016, Shs14b was due for repayment, but only Shs5.5b had been recovered. The outstanding balance appeared unrecoverable. A whopping Shs527m had been given to non-traceable youth groups.

Some youth groups could not be traced on the ground, were non-existent or had disbanded and formed different projects, making the recovery of the money difficult.

Given that by last year, a staggering Shs64 billion had been disbursed under the same shambolic mechanism, we could see more colossal losses when the 2016/17 Auditor General’s findings are out.

Parliament must put Bigirimana to strict accountability to explain why the ministry has not put in place a proper mechanism that ensures disbursement is to competent youth groups and guarantees recovery of public money. This pouring away of taxpayers’ money to unscrupulous and anonymous beneficiaries should stop.

Billions of shillings of taxpayers’ money were also wasted on untraceable beneficiaries in previous similar government programmes such as the Entandikwa (start-up capital) scheme. They have never been recovered and the beneficiaries are unknown or untraceable to-date.

In the alternative, if the government cannot manage the youth funds, let it liaise with commercial banks and remit the money to them as a special fund at a friendly interest rate, enough to cover their operational costs, but to be lent specifically to qualifying youth groups. The banks can manage the lending and recovery processes better on behalf of government.