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KAMPALA - State House has been ordered to table critical documents relating to donations worth sh80.18 billion that President Yoweri Museveni made in the last financial year.

Public Accounts Committee (PAC/Central) chairperson Muhamad Muwanga Kivumbi issued the directive on Wednesday, May 22, 2024, during a meeting with State House officials led by the comptroller Jane Barekye. 

This was during deliberations on Auditor General (AG) John Muwanga’s 2022/23 Financial Year audit report on the entity.

During the year under review, documents seen by New Vision indicate that the aforementioned funds formed part of the community outreach programmes budget output.

Of this, sh80.18b was spent on donations, sh3.8bn on general staff salaries, sh1.167billion on travel inland, sh10million on clothing, and sh3.397billion on allowances.

Other activities included maintenance of transport equipment which cost sh521.2million while welfare and entertainment imposed a charge of sh25.3million on the consolidated fund among many others.

The entire budget output cost sh89.17billion.

Issuing the directive, Kivumbi noted that during interactions with the auditor, the entity should have given him the hard copy complete with all these details.

Without these documents, Kivumbi observed that there is little MPs can do to ascertain that there was proper accountability.

“Donations also include school fees for 3,425 students. We want to see the students that amount to 3,425, where they study. Are there those studying abroad, you can leave those who are studying classified things, we know how to treat them. But give us the non-classified,” Kivumbi ordered.

Xavier Kyooma (Ibanda North, NRM) who was a member of the same committee in the ninth Parliament noted that when activities are not costed, they are subject to manipulation.

“Those presidential donations, how many are they and how much is each donation? How many of these students are being sponsored, were they being paid the same amount? If this was the case, how per each? So that by the end of the day, you have your total output and you can’t actually link it to the various activities that link it to that output,” Kyooma pointed out.  

State House speaks out

Pledging to oblige,  State House’s assistant commissioner of planning Immaculate Naamala said, "We shall provide the details because they are readily available. By the time we come to these broad figures, there are back-end excel sheets that we are working with.

However, I must also say that when the auditor was looking at the documents, he looked at the documents that are generated from the Program Budgeting system (PBS) and the PBS is summarized,”

Presidential industrial hubs

That said, lawmakers also tasked State House with a sustainability plan for close to twenty presidential industrial hubs.

Between bouts of laughter, Kivumbi said that the undertaking was imposing a heavy burden on vote in charge of the day-to-day running of the president’s official residence.

“Are you going to be running these parks forever from the home of the president, why don’t you take them to the office of the President? There should be a separation, let the statehouse be for what it is. You seem to be loading it with your own things that should be for the office of the President?” he posed.

Ideally, he said technical institutions should be the ones skilling the youth. However, unfortunately, many of these institutions such as Kabasanda Technical School in Butambala lie in a dilapidated state, their mandate having been usurped.

He contended that the duplication being witnessed defeats the logic of the ongoing rationalization of government ministries, agencies, and departments (MDAs).

“You buy equipment that should have gone to a technical school, you put it in these hubs. This is how the Government keeps doing the same things and you speak about rationalization. The State House called a caucus and preached about rationalization; it must start at home,” said Kivumbi.

Barnabas Tinkasimiire (Buyaga West, NRM) quipped in, “Your major function is to provide for the welfare of the chief executive and his immediate family, not to engage in agriculture, education, not engage in testing HIV/AIDs, COVID-19, no. that isn’t your mandate.”

State House Comptroller Jane Barekye however pushed back against their claims.

“My mandate is to facilitate the President to perform his duties according to the constitution among these, all that I am doing is facilitate him and I am not training the youths under the house of the President, they are in districts and everywhere in the regions, so, he is serving Ugandans through his vote and it is his decision,” Barekye stated.