Gulu District Local Government Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Dorothy Ajwang was on Friday evening forced to take an oath by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of parliament after she was deemed hostile by the committee.
Ajwang and four other senior Gulu district officials had appeared before the PAC to answer queries raised in the Auditor General’s (AG) report in the financial year 2013/2014.
Ajwang, Andrew Olal Obong, the District Engineer, Alphonse Oboni, the former Principle Personnel and Jacinta Akwero, the former Internal Auditor were grilled for close to four hours –from 4:40PM to 9:30PM.
Ibrahim Kasozi (Makindye East), a member of PAC suggested to the Chairman of the Committee, MP Reagan Okumu (Aswa) that Ajwang should be put on oath since she has been dodging many of the questions put to her.
MP Kasozi observed that Ajwang’s dodging of questions was wasting time of the committee’s fact-finding- mission.
MP Okumu had earlier on warned that he would be forced to order Ajwang to take an oath because she (Ajwang) was not straight in her response to the audit queries raised by the office of the Auditor General (AG).
After close to one and half hours of back and forth answer and question session, Okumu ordered Ajwang to take an oath and she obliged.
The CAO was facing series of questions on ghost workers, poor local revenue mobilization, irregular payment of salaries, award of contracts on civil works and absenteeism among the civil servants.
According AG report, Gulu paid a total of 71.9 million shillings to workers who do not exist.
The AG report also indicates that there were irregular payments of salaries.
The report cited two cases were two staff were irregularly paid to the tune of up to 4 Million shillings.
One unidentified worker received 2.2 million shillings and yet her salary was 1 million shillings.
In another incident, a nurse received 1.8 million shillings and yet her salary was 1.55 million.
A teacher at Opit SS, identified as Alfred Oyat, was also paid twice in a period of two days.
Geoffrey Labongo, the Gulu former Principle Human Resource, who also appeared alongside the CAO said there were no irregular payments of salaries blaming the problem on the new salary payment system—the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) that was introduced two years ago.
Labongo explained that because the government put in place a new system of payment of salaries, unlike the old model, there were requirements that each employee should have a contract number. Mr Labongo said the new system had posed challenges.
On the ghost workers, Labongo said at the time of audit, the files for the workers, some of whom he said had retired, was not readily available, as such he said, he could not provide answers to the queries raised by the Auditor General.
PAC gave the Gulu officials two months to recover the money or face tough measures.
MP Julius Ocen (Kapyelabong), warned that heads will roll if public funds are not accounted for. The MP said the committee wants to send a clear signal to Ugandans that no one should play with public money especially those put in position to ensure that services reach tax payers.
The Public Accounts Committee of parliament is mandated to examine audit accounts showing amounts of money granted by parliament to meet public expenditure of government.
It comprises of 20 members comprising of Independents, the ruling NRM party and the Opposition.
