Hunter becomes the hunted: IGG welcomes investigation by State House over corruption

The Inspector General of Government, Justice Irene Mulyagonja has welcomed the planned investigations by the State House anticorruption unit headed by Lt Col Edith Nakalema and vowed to arrest and prosecute any staff who will be implicated in the report.
Ms Mulyagonja told Daily Monitor on Friday that her office is anxiously waiting for the outcome of State House investigation to take action on the culprits and clarified that her office normally prosecutes errant staff and doesn’t not condone corruption.

The IGG comments came after a group of unidentified IGG staff members petitioned the statehouse anticorruption unit to investigate corruption claims at IGG. In their petition dated Match and received on March 20, the whistleblowers cited a raft of irregularities ranging from illegal recruitments, failure to confirm existing acting staff to their positions to outright corruption, noting that “the environment here at the Inspectorate of Government prohibits any staff from addressing their grievances with the system.” But Justice Mulyagonja defended the inspectorate from accusations of conspiracy and welcomed Lt Col Edith Nakalema investigations.

“The statehouse can investigate the allegations and we welcome that. We always internally do such investigations against our own and if we find them culpable, we prosecute them. So we are waiting for their investigations and we shall be glad to find out if our staff are receiving bribes or not and if so, we shall make sure they face the law,” Justice Mulyagonja said.
On the issue of failure to confirm the acting officers who have served for about three years and alleged illegal recruitments, she said there are procedures to follow, which the management has communicated to the concerned officers.
“The whistleblower who appears to be a staff should know it better that there are procedures to follow in recruitment, appointments and confirmation. We cannot go against the procedures,” Justice Mulyagonja said.

Lt Col Nakalema, the head of the statehouse anticorruption unit to could not be reached for clarification on whether they are investigating the IGG or not. An official at the unit who didn’t want to identify himself acknowledged receiving the petition, but said he wasn’t the right person to offer an explanation. “Please give us your details and the right person will get back to you with the right information,” the official said.
Mr Don Wanyama, the president’s press secretary promised to find out the status of the investigations, but by the time of going to press, he had not yet communicated how far the unit had gone with the investigations.

The petition
The whistleblowers in their petition dated 3rd March 2019 said a number of regional inspectorate officers have acted in their positions for more than three years without being confirmed, contrary to the public service standing order.
“Most of our colleagues in the regional Offices were handed letters of care taking assignment to fill and serve in positions of Regional Inspectorate Officers in various regional in FY 2015/16 and were promised to be confirmed in those position after six months.”

“After one year of serving in these positions, the Officers requested to be confirmed, however, they were told that the Institution had maxed out the wage bill, so confirmations could not be made. Management later added that since these Officers were “just” care taking, they did not qualify to be confirmed in appointment,” the petition reads.”
The whistleblowers wondered why the management has changed position contrary to the previous practices where such officers would be confirmed after about eight months
“If they were in care taking positions, then why are they being paid Acting Allowance? We therefore, beg your Office to look into this matter. What the Officers really want is to either get confirmed in those positions immediately, or be reverted to their old substantive positions.”

Irregular recruitment
The whistleblowers also accused the Secretary to the Inspectorate of Government, Rose N. Kafeero together with other board members and management of handpicking some people for appointment without following the normal recruitment procedures.
“We therefore, beg your Office to please halt the ongoing irregular recruitment. To be honest with you, the Inspectorate of Government requires new leadership as soon as possible, in any case, it should have happened yesterday. We beg the President to force her resignation if possible."

Bribery allegations
The staff also say that the allegations of bribery among IG staff are real saying, “this is because the environment here at IG is that of every man for himself. Without mentioning names, some staff are currently receiving bribes of cases not registered from accused persons, bribes going as high as Shs350m per allegation. That partly explains why the IG is not performing.”

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