By Francis Lubega
20th Oct 2022
picture from Urn
The Speaker of Parliament, Anita Among wants the Inspectorate of Government (IG) to be given the mandate to investigate corruption under the private sector.
Among made the statement while meeting officials from the IG led by the Inspector General of Government, Beti Kamya on Tuesday who submitted to parliament their 2021 performance report.
The Constitution under Chapter 13, Article 225 mandates the IG to investigate cases of corruption, abuse of office and others.
The jurisdiction of the Inspectorate of Government covers officers or leaders mainly employed in the public service, and also institutions, organizations or enterprises as Parliament may prescribe by law.
Among said that there is a need for a constitutional amendment to ensure that the mandate of the IGG is widened to ensure that private sector investigations are also carried out.
Recently, the Inspectorate of Government together with the Governance Transparency Institute conducted a study on the cost of corruption in Uganda and revealed that the estimated cost of corruption per year is 9.144 trillion Shillings.
Among described this as absurd and called for the amendment of the constitution to ensure that it does not limit the IG to only the public sector.
Speaking about the Inspectorate’s annual budget, Among said that while parliament gave the IG additional resources of 11.63 billion Shillings in the current financial year 2022/2023, appointments and recruitments in a bid to help the inspectorate have not been done because the money is limited.
Before the current financial year budget, the IG budget for the past four years had stagnated at 53 billion Shillings.
Currently, the budget in the current financial year stands at 79 billion Shillings.
In response, IGG Betty Kamya said that it was important to know that parliament is going to come out and assume its responsibility to ensure that the IG which as an independent body is given a mandate to come up with its own budget.
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