It was reported last week that the land probe commission headed by Justice Catherine Bamugemereire had spent a whooping Shs13 billion in carrying out its duties. And while the public was alarmed by the exorbitant expenditure, news emerged that the commission wanted another Shs 7 billion to conclude its work, including carrying out more investigations and writing a report.
Ministry of finance however refused to give them the Shs7 billion on grounds that they had not accounted for the Shs13 billion that had been spent in the last 11 months.
To break down the figures, it means the commission was spending 1.18billion shillings a month. Considering there are 22 working days in a regular month, it means the commission was spending close to Shs54m every single day!!!
Background
President Yoweri Museveni appointed the seven-member Commission on December 8, 2016 and they took oath on February 21, 2017, but started work on May 3 due to delay in availability of funds.
They were mandated to inquire into the effectiveness of the land law, policies and processes of land acquisition and management in Uganda.
The President received the interim report in February this year.
Bamugemerire says they have traversed the entire country handling issues of land grabbing and encroachment on wetlands and forests.
Fund request blocked
The request for an additional Shs7 billion was rejected by Secretary to the Treasury Keith Muhakanizi and local newspaper Daily Monitor reported that he advised the Commission Secretary, Dr Douglas Singiza, to seek accountability documents from Ministry of Lands Accounting Officer, Ms Dorcas Okalany.
Lands ministry apparently distanced themselves from anything to do with accounting for the funds and asked the Land probe team to take full responsibility for the accountability and submit the relevant documents to Finance ministry directly if they want more funding.
The finance ministry has however rejected the Shs7 billion proposal and said they can give the commission another Shs2 billion, only after they have submitted accountability for the Shs13 billion.
“Costly investigations”
Even if the public is baffled by the mind boggling figures, local press quoted Justice Bamugemeire saying the investigations have been costly.
“As you are aware the Commission is conducting a public interest duty and in many of the cases undertaken which we have had to deal with, there have been costly investigations.”
But many are blaming the expenditures on fat allowances of the commissioners. Apparently commissioners are paid about Shs720,000 per day they sit, with an additional Shs2.5m per day whenever they travel abroad.
The commission has had about 140 sittings translating into more than Shs100m as sitting allowances for each of the commissioners. They also spent about 21 days in Ghana, UK and South Africa implying they each pocketed about Shs67m as allowanced for foreign trips.
This has created a bad working relationship with lower commission staff whose salaries are even delayed!
Mr Elbert Byenkya, the lead counsel and spokesperson for the commission defended what some staff called “unnecessary fat allowances” for the commissioners.
“I think the Commission is doing a very special job. If you want people to do the job properly, dedicate all their time to doing that job and you want them to excise utmost integrity, you can’t have both ways. There is a cost to the time people are spending and I don’t think that the commission wages are inconsistent to the work they are doing,” Byenkya said.
With other staff crying foul about delayed salaries Bamugemereire says it has been the same challenge across the board.
“We have all been taking home monthly payments in bits and pieces. We asked our staff to endure pain and serve their country. But we have always endeavoured to settle outstanding salary arrears as soon as resources become available,” she said.
“We, however, reject any attempt to water down the tremendous work done by the Commission to stave the spate of land grabbing which had gotten out of hand,” she boasted.
However Shs13 billion expenditure, with the commission asking for another Shs 7 billion to conclude the job, isn’t Shs20 billion such an enormous cost for the taxpayer to bear? To put it into context, The Shs 20 billion that the commission deems fit to do its work can run Mulago Hospital for close to four months as it was allocated 66.7 billion in the 2017/2018 budget. The commission’s money would run a regional referral hospital like Masaka, Mbarara or Jinja for three years!