Joseph Gonzaga Ssewungu, the Member of Parliament for Kalungu West detained two senior district officials on Monday for allegedly charging and extorting funds from primary teachers purportedly to get identity cards.
Mariam Menha, the Kalungu district education officer and Lillian Nakamatte, the Kalungu Chief Administrative Officer are accused of extorting money from more than 1, 000 primary school teachers from Kalungu district, for a fraudulent ID scam.
The unsuspecting teachers turned up at Kalungu district headquarters on Monday to get new identify cards, only to be asked to pay 20,000 shillings each for the IDs.
Serage Mukasa, one of the teachers says the alleged fee was asked by both the CAO and the DEO. The matter was however brought to the attention of the Kalungu West Member of parliament, Joseph Ssewungu who rushed to Kalungu district to find out why teachers were being charged for IDs.
When confronted, the CAO and the DEO failed to explian their scheme, prompting the teachers and the MP to lock the two officers inside the district headquarters accusing them of extortion.
MP Ssewungu explains that he detained the two officials because they illegally extorted funds from teachers contrary to the Government's programe of issuing teachers IDs free of charge.
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MP Ssewungu also interrogated the two officials as police looked on helplessly.
Paul Okello, a primary school teacher at Kabukunge Demonstration primary school said the two officials should be interdicted for the mess.
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Mariam Menha, the Kalungu DEO and Lillian Nakamatte, the Kalungu CAO refused to explain to URN why they were extorting money from the teachers.
On Monday evening, the Kalungu district executive convened an extra ordinary meeting at the district headquarters to discuss the matter.
Kalungu district has over 1200 primary school teachers in government aided schools.
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