
KAMPALA, UGANDA | THE INDEPENDENT | The Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Thomas Tayebwa has said that the Business Committee Parliament will discuss a strategy to effectively handle reports of the Auditor General within the Accountability Committees.
According to the Tayebwa, the Government can only implement the Auditor General’s recommendations if they have been adopted by Parliament; however, the reports often take a long time to be approved by the House.
“If you wait for four or five years to approve a report, how will you process a Treasury Memoranda, which is an action-taken report? But you can make a subcommittee out of a committee and scrutinize projects or MDAs. When you adopt as a committee, you come here and we debate,” said Tayebwa.
The Deputy Speaker made the statement while chairing plenary Sitting on Tuesday.
This followed a proposal by Kira Municipality MP, Ibrahim Ssemujju, who suggested that the Auditor General’s report should be expeditiously adopted by the House before further investigations are made by Committees of Parliament.
“We have been treating the Auditor General’s report as raw material for committees to do work. In other jurisdictions like Kenya, the report of the Auditor General is adopted as it comes, then committees request to do further investigation in specific areas,” Ssemujju noted.
Sarah Opendi, the Tororo District Woman Representative raised concern about the Constitutional provisions of handling the Auditor General’s reports by Parliament, and the time given to House Committees to handle the business.
“The Constitution says we must consider them within six months. Now, if within six months, the committee is only given two or three months to handle these reports, and you have about 400 or so entities, how can we effectively handle them and conclude business?” Opendi said.
The Deputy Speaker noted that the work of the Standing Committees, which scrutinize the Auditor General’s report, was halted to allow legislators to prioritize the business timelines expected with handling the Budget Framework Paper (BFP).
“But now that the Budget Committee has already started receiving committee reports for the BFP, we hope to conclude by next week. On the issue of time, I think it is something we shall go back and discuss administratively,” Tayebwa added.
In his communication to the House during the sitting, Tayebwa also said that the Auditor General was urged to carry out value-for-money audits and special audits, in a bid to produce a comprehensive report to be considered by Parliament.
This, he noted, will go beyond the scope of financial audits and give more details on issues of mischarge alongside value for money.
“If you said you did one kilometre at 1 billion Shillings in Masaka, how come a neighbouring district like Lyantonde is doing it at 500 million Shillings? It is the same landscape, same conditions but you are not getting value on one side. Accountability committees must now squeeze in much deeper,” said Tayebwa.
He also urged the Accountability Committees to become stricter on Accounting Officers of institutions, noting that only 31 percent of Parliamentary recommendations made while adopting the Auditor General’s report for the financial year 2023/2024 were adopted.
Additionally, 35 percent of these recommendations were partially implemented, whereas 34 percent were not implemented at all.
The latest Auditor General’s report for 2024 was tabled on the floor of Parliament on Tuesday for scrutiny by the Accountability Committees.
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