President Yoweri Museveni has assured claimants who lost their cattle during the two Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency in northern Uganda that they will be compensated directly into their accounts instead of receiving payments through their associations.
“Let me clear the air here, money will paid directly into your (claimants) accounts and not through associations. We shall not allow even this issue of middle men to get involved in these compensation processes”, president Museveni said while addressing more than 100 NRM leaders across Acholi, Lango and west Nile sub region on Monday at Gulu State Lodge in the 4th Division barracks.
The president’s assurance to the claimants came after an ardent NRM supporter in Gulu, Mr Samuel Oduny expressed concerns that the associations that had been formed to aid the claimants in getting their money had misappropriated the funds leaving genuine claimants to wallow in poverty.
Gulu Resident District Commissioner, Capt Santo Okot Lapolo said a total of 1,678 claimants in the district have so far been verified in an ongoing exercise. Lapolo further said the claimants will have to be approved by their sub counties before their particulars are submitted to the ministry of finance and to the justice and constitutional affairs ministry.
“We are about to finish verifying all the claimants and we believe that we shall be done with process by next week. I can’t tell the number of the ghost claims we have got but I can assure you we landed on some of them”, Mr Lapolo said.
Background
In 2006, more than 20,000 Acholi war debt claimants sued the government demanding compensation for animals lost in the two decades insurgency in the region. However, in 2007, government opted for out-of-court settlement and promised to compensate the claimants Shs 35 trillion
Since 2009, Shs 12.1 billion has been paid to the claimants were each animal was valued at Shs 650,000. The claimants received Ss5 billon from government in 2013
In November last year, the government tasked the executive members of Acholi War Debt claimant Association (AWDC), a body that was assigned to handle the compensation processes, to account for Shs 7.1 billion advanced to them between2006 and 2011 meant for the claimants.
The acting commissioner in the Attorney General office, Mr Henry Oluka noted that some individual had received payments yet they did not belong to the association
However, the embattled AWCD chairperson, who is currently out of office after he was suspended in April last year for allegedly misusing funds amounting to Shs 130 million meant for 20,000 claimants dismissed the accusations, saying they submitted the accountabilities of all the money to the ministry of Justice and constitutional affairs.
By Terence Alur
