A week after the media exposed parliament’s failure to fund oil bribery investigations by the ad hoc committee on Oil, Speaker Rebecca Kadaga has met the committee Chairperson and re-assured him that his members should prepare and travel to all the six countries they plan to gather information from.
Michael Werikhe this week said they are now working on their travel documents with a plan to leave by the end of this month or early June. He said his meeting with Kadaga had approved the entire committee’s travel to all the countries.
The countries that the committee intends to go to include Malta, United Arab Emirates, the US, UK, Kenya and Switzerland. They are all countries that are linked to the allegations made against ministers Sam Kutesa and Hillary Onek in the investigations of how money was reportedly wired to their accounts.
The two, plus Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, were in October last year named in bribery allegations involving Tullow Oil, one of the oil exploration companies in the country. The ministers have all denied the allegations.
On March 27, the Accounting Officer of Parliament, Kwamya Kaija wrote to the Speaker saying there was no money to continue with the investigations as planned and advised that the committee splits itself into four different groups to travel concurrently to the six countries.
Kaija also advised them that the alternative would be for the committee not to travel but adopt other ways of gathering the information they need.
Kadaga had agreed with Kaija’s advice through a letter she wrote on April 19, to the committee Chairperson, advising that the split into smaller groups would minimize costs and fit within available funds earmarked for the committees.
Werikhe said that his committee has since finished 80 percent of their work and was only awaiting their trip to compile a report and hand it over to the Speaker for debate.
He says they need about 200 million shillings to finalise their investigations.
By the time the media reports came out last week and Kadaga intervened with a fresh directive, the committee was already considering calling off the trips out of the country.
This decision would have meant that the allegations of corruption against the three ministers, contained in the first Term of Reference, would not be undertaken since the committee feared to do a half-baked investigation.
