The Secretary to Treasury, Ramathan Ggoobi has ordered all accounting officers in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to delete all staff who weren’t verified by the Auditor General during the recent exercise conducted to verify staff on government payroll.
He issued the directive through the Budget Execution Circular for FY2023/2024 where he announced the annual cashflow plan, policy operational and administrative guidelines for executing the national budget noting, Staff not verified during audit by the Office of the Auditor General should be deleted from payroll not later than 30th July 2023.”
It should be recalled that early this year, the Ministry of Finance asked the Auditor General to conduct a forensic audit into the Government payroll after the Ministry of Public Service, expressed concern over the numerous supplementary requests accounting officers made towards clearing of wages of staff, thus prompting the Auditor general conducted a physical verification of all staff.
The Secretary to the Treasury in further directives also directed all Accounting Officers to ensure that all contracts for works, goods and services shall be awarded in Uganda shillings and warned against the recruitment of staff both in public service or contract staff during this FY except on replacement basis.
While appearing before the Public Accounts Committee to respond to the June 2022 audit queries, Ggoobi revealed that the Ministry has put in place a number of policy measures directing of accounting officers with a view of improving on the way we spend money in government, in reducing expenditure like the ban on purchase of new vehicles and only limited it to vehicles for purposes like; ambulances, medicine supplies, agriculture extension services, security and for revenue moblisation.
“We are telling accounting officers who keep writing to the Ministers asking for supplementaries, they are going to be sanctioned. I have letters there where members were asking for supplementaries last FY, I kept them, I didn’t give them to my colleague to even look at, we are now going to bring them out and analyse them. We want to limit it to what you anticipated as Parliament that there will be some unavoidable and unforeseen expenditures, we are going to ask these accounting officers get me is going to be a sanctionable action,” remarked Ggoobi.
The audit came at the time the June 2022 audit report, revealed that Government lost Shs19.026Bn due to payment of salaries to ineligible persons/individuals in 129 LGs, citing a review of a file from the Education service Commission (ESC) which indicated that 609 secondary school and tertiary institution employees used forged minutes to access government payroll, and these individuals had been on the payroll from 1-39 years with some even approaching the retirement, but the Commission pushed the blame to the Ministry of Education that is responsible for the appointment and posting of teachers.
The Audit report also indicated that a review of the payroll registers and IFMS payments revealed an over payment of Shs3.837Bn in 75 LGs in respect of 2,085 employees and 270 pensioners while there were reports of under payment of Shs24.934M in 115 LGs in respect of 3,802 employees and 4,545 pensioners.
The auditors unearthed more rot into the local government payroll when they carried out a comparison of the base pay as per IPPS payroll registers with the base pay as per salary structure for 2021/22 revealing that, 1,264 employees in 26 LGs were paid on the wrong scales leading to over payments of Shs532,949,259 and under payments of Shs886,806,364, while 28,172 employees in 26 LGs were paid on wrong steps/levels/notches leading to over payments of Shs2.386Bn and under payments of Shs2.652Bn. As if that isn’t enough, the auditors also revealed that Shs1.071Bn was paid to 795 staff who had either retired, transferred, absconded or died with the worst delays ranging from 1 to 16 months.