Taxpayers deserve  govt accountability

In 2019, Parliament approved $379 million (about Shs1.4 trillion at the time) for the construction of the 264-bed capacity hospital in Lubowa, on the Kampala-Entebbe Highway. Finasi/Roko Construction Limited took over the project site at Lubowa on June 10, 2019. Then there was the Shs348 billion that the Accountant General said the developer had earlier been given for the Financial Year 2021/2022.

In March, the Ministry of Health tabled a Shs2.7 billion Supplementary Budget intended to further finance the hospital construction in the National Budget for Financial Year 2023/2024. Requests tabled by the Minister of Health, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, showed that the money would be spent on the supervision of the works at the construction site. 

But some members of the parliamentary Budget Committee demanded justification for the Lubowa hospital project, which they said had stalled. In fact, the committee chairman, also Koboko Municipality MP, Dr Charles Ayume, said: “I think the issue of Lubowa is brain-dead, we just have to plug off the life support and we escort it to the mortuary, in my opinion as the chairperson of the committee.” The government still paid a deaf ear. 

According to Transparency International, a local hospital in Uganda built on similar terms costs $25 million (about Shs93 billion). But for comparison, the Lubowa hospital project is costing approximately 16 times more than the other hospitals. This is blamed on the flawed procurement process of this project, which has seen many other issues come up along the way.  

On Thursday last week, when this publication conducted a site visit to the multibillion hospital whose construction has been a subject of public debate since 2019, Mr Tonny Abet, our health reporter, was arrested by police. He was held incommunicado without the knowledge of, or access to lawyers for more than 24 hours, charged with criminal trespass before he was released the following day. In short, it is now criminal to even dare seek accountability for taxpayers’ money in this project. 

While this project held immense promise for our nation’s health sector, it has also posed significant challenges in terms of accountability. Our government must recognise that it holds a sacred trust with its citizens to ensure transparency, accountability and efficiency in all government projects to benefit us all. Accountability is not an option; it is an imperative that we must demand and expect from our government.