Three Soroti district officers were arrested Tuesday evening by the State House Anti-Corruption Unit over alleged abuse of office.

They are acting district engineer Alex Oryekot, assistant district engineer Simon Okello and procurement officer Haggai Ewena.

They were detained at Soroti Police Station following their arrest.

The order to apprehend the trio was issued by the deputy director of the anti-corruption unit at the Internal Security Organization (ISO), Fatuma Namukwaya, who represented economic monitoring state minister Beatrice Akello.

The suspects are accused of abuse of office emanating from works on a road project in Tubur town council in Soroti.

According to the contract documents, the low-cost sealing road measuring 0.9km budgeted at a cost of sh419 million was reduced to 0.4km.

Haggai Ewena the procurement officer holding the documents as a State House employee questions them

The road works were launched in February by the district and weeks later the monitoring team visited the site to ascertain the level of work and actual size of the work in comparison with the paperwork.

“We have kept on raising this matter but we have been viewed as anti-development, yet we are concerned that taxpayers' money was going to be stolen,” said Bob Owiny, the district councilor for Tubur.

He said the town council was going to lose over shs180 million that the engineers would have saved from the 0.4km that was reportedly removed from the plan.

The initial plan was to construct a single surface road but along the way, the engineers allegedly decided on their own to adopt a premix design that they claim is stronger as compared to a single surface.

After the three failed to offer satisfactory explanations, Samuel Ssebikari, the senior legal officer of State House, demanded that the trio be further interrogated by the State House detectives, and then handed over to Soroti Police.

Simon Peter Edoru, the district (LC5) chairperson of Soroti, welcomed the work of the monitoring team and pledged to offer his total support.

“Their coming is timely because no single coin has been lost. This matter is as a result of the district officers failing to agree on which design to use,” said Edoru.

It emerged that the discrepancies centre on the differing project lengths specified in the contracts that the officers failed to explain.

In a related development, the monitoring team on Monday arrested two Kaberamaido district officers over corruption and abuse of office.

The suspects are commercial officer David Eyagu and acting district education officer Richard Eliebu.

Today (Wednesday), the team will be in Soroti city inspecting key government projects and key among them is the Soroti fruit factory.