The Public Accounts Committee of parliament – PAC, has through its investigations recovered up to 3.5 trillion shillings from various government officials and departments within the last five years, according to its former Chairman, Nandala Mafabi.
Nandala, the Budadiri West legislator is the new Leader of Opposition in parliament, having served as the first PAC chairman under a multiparty arrangement.
He said that all the 3.5 trillion was returned to the consolidated fund.
Nandala, while handing over four accountability committees to new chairpersons today revealed that his committee was able to recover an average of 700 billion shillings every year since he took over the job of hunting for the corrupt in government.
He revealed that at the beginning he was threatened with death but eventually the threats lost meaning as many people discovered they could not do anything to him.
He said as he went about his work, he always believed that God would protect him from all dangers.
The four Accountability committees in parliament; local government, government assurance, commissions and state enterprises and the public accounts committee are constitutionally headed by the opposition to ensure proper oversight role.
Nandala noted that all accountability committee meetings will continue to be conducted in full view of the media attention so that Ugandans know how their money is being used. He applauded the media for always working closely with MPs in exposing theft in government.
He revealed that among the successes they achieved was forcing government officials to return all the black berry mobile phones that they had been given to coordinate CHOGM activities.
He said the black berry phones would be auctioned to recover the billions of shillings spent on buying them.
Nandala said that the new committee heads would work hard to highlight corruption within the Global Fund, Gavi Fund and the Microfinance Support Center, whose head, Dr. Specioza Wandira Kazibwe, was last week suspended.
Nandala said that in his brief look at the financial reports of the center, there was a lot of money that was stolen. He said he would make sure he regularly supervises all the accountability committees to ensure the country gets value for their taxes.
The new PAC Chairman, Kassiano Wadri promised to tighten the grip on the corrupt in government. He said he would work hard to make sure issues don’t pile up in the committee.
Jack Sabiiti, the new chairperson of the Local government committee rejected accusations by some government officials that the parliamentary committee was like a Kangaroo court. He said he would give credit where government does well but expose its wrongs where ever they are.
The PAC under Nandala is most famously remembered for exposing theft of billions of shillings during the CHOGM in Uganda. Investigations that followed implicated prominent government officials, including current Prime Minister, Amama Mbabazi, foreign affairs minister Sam Kutesa and former Vice President Prof. Gilbert Bukenya among others.
Bukenya was later dragged to the anti corruption court over the loss of the CHOGM funds.
