By John Semakula

TWO officials were on Tuesday detained at Mukono Police Station for over five hours on the orders of MPs over failure to account for sh690m.

Kizito Mugerwa, the assistant chief administrative officer (CAO), and Frank Lukabwe, an accountant, failed to provide accountability for the funds which were spent during the 2005/6 financial year. The money was meant for the procurement of office items and capacity building.

MPs on the local government accounts committee are in the district to assess the Auditor General’s reports for the 2004-2007 financial years.

The committee, in a meeting at the district headquarters chaired by Kapelebyong MP Johnson Malinga, handed over the two to the Police after they allegedly presented forged accounting papers.

Most of the documents allegedly contained white-washed names of payees, forged voucher numbers, payments without signatures and they had not been verified by the internal auditors, the MPs said.

Rebecca Babirye, an internal auditor, denied having endorsed most of the documents that the officials presented.
The committee also grilled the former CAO, Grace Watuwa, over the funds.

The MPs queried why sh6.2m was paid to members of the district executive committee as sitting allowance in the 2005/6 financial year yet they were not entitled to it. They asked Watuwa to recover the money within three months.

The current CAO, Eustace Gakwandi, told the committee that he had written to the officials who received the allowance to refund the money but they had not responded.