Officers returning funds to treasury will be punished - government
Speaking out. Mr Ben Kumumanya, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government. FILE PHOTO
What you need to know:
Issue. Mr Kumumanya said he wonders why the districts are failing to spend the money disbursed to them even when the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Public Service have been supportive to their supplement budget requests. He said last year, the ministry interdicted two CAOs and one deputy over incompetence.
The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government, Mr Ben Kumumanya, yesterday warned that accounting officers for local governments that will return to the treasury the money meant for delivery of services in their areas of jurisdiction will be punished.
Mr Kumumanya was speaking during a quarterly meeting for Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs) and Municipal Town Clerks (TCs) in Kampala.
“ This is a management decision taken at the ministry after seeing that some districts and municipalities return money at the end of every financial year even when services are not delivered,” Mr Kumumanya said.
He said management has seen it as a sign of incompetence for the officers not to spend money even when it has been released to the local government by the Ministry of Finance to fund the approved budget.
A case in point, the PS said, is the situation where the Ministry of Finance swept funds from accounts of some districts after they closed the 2017/18 financial year without paying pensions and salaries.
“CAOs who will fail to process pensions and gratuities of retired civil servants, and also salaries of the staff who are in service will be held responsible. This punishment will also go down to heads of department who might have failed the process of processing payments,” he said.
He warned that accounting officers will as part of punishment see their salaries withheld from the centre until they sort out the issues of the pensioners and staff who will have been affected by the return of funds to the treasury.
Background
The Auditor General (AG) in a latest report queried why government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), and local governments failed to pay Shs65.6 billion for pension and gratuity to retired civil servants in the last Financial Year.
The AG stated that the money was returned to the Consolidated Fund.
Of the total arrears, MDAs had not paid out Shs35b, up from Shs17.3b the previous last financial year and local governments Shs20.7b, down from Shs100.7b the previous financial year. Municipal councils did not remit Shs2.3b of pension and gratuity to its retired civil servants.
The State Minister for Local Government, Ms Jennifer Namuyangu, said it was “disheartening” for local governments to return money to the treasury leaving the delivery of critical services such as health, education and road maintenance at risk of collapsing.
