AG in U-turn on ghost Parliament employees

The Auditor General, Mr John Muwanga, has revised the number of ghost workers on Parliament payroll from 21 to two, in a space of less than two weeks.

In the two reports both dated September 13, 2023, but released on different dates, Mr Muwanga made changes in his findings of the Salary Payroll Special Audit Report for the Parliamentary Commission for the period ending June 30, 2023.
The AG, who had faulted the Commission for paying an annual Shs1.6b to 21 staff, where 19 of these are non-existent, later said in the new report that only two staff were illegally receiving Shs179m annually.

Parliament’s Director for Corporate and Public Affairs, Mr Chris Obore, shared the two reports with this newspaper on March 6, a day after he told a public dialogue on X, formerly Twitter, hosted by Agora Discourse, a lead participant in the ongoing #UgandaParliamentExbihition.
The exhibition, which started on February 26, is led by Ms Agather Atuhaire, a journalist-cum-lawyer-cum-activist and university professor and cartoonist, Dr Jimmy Ssentongo, alias Spire, and it has exposed a litany of alleged wrongdoings at Parliament.

In the exhibitions, Parliament Speaker Anita Among and Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa, as well as other members of Parliament, have been adversely named in questionable financial transactions marked by the transfer of several millions, and in some cases billions, of shillings from House vote through personal bank accounts in aides.  
However, there is  no evidence of wrongdoing by the officials named in the payouts.
Another issue red-flagged by the exhibitors is nepotism – leaders in the House drafting relatives as employees.
In the March 6 X space conversation, Mr Obore branded the exhibition as a witch-hunt of Speaker Among, saying some of the data shared was either false or exaggerated.

When challenged to present the authentic figures, he declined citing the Official Secrets Act, and told listeners he would share with this newspaper, as an example, a document detailing the Auditor General’s walk back on his findings on ghost workers at Parliament.
We had in a previous report detailed findings by the AG in a February 5 report that nearly two dozen employees on Parliament payroll did not exist in reality.

“A sum of Shs132.4m was paid as salary for the month of May 2023 to the staff in question [and] this translates into an annual wage of [average] Shs1.6b ... I advised the Accounting Officer to ensure that the 21 staff be deleted from the payroll of the commission,” he noted.
Responding to inquiries by Nation Media Group-Uganda (NMG-U) journalist Raymond Mujuni during the X space conversation, Mr Obore said the Auditor General “contacted our office and informed us that his auditors had erred and made corrections on the payroll”.

In the revised version of the report dated February 22, which Mr Obore shared, AG Muwanga instead commended Parliament Accounting Officer for “ensuring prompt maintenance of the payroll and advised him to continue maintaining an updated payroll”.
The AG reported that 577 staff had been validated, contrasting the 558 initially confirmed.

“In response to my validation findings, the Accounting Officer concurred with me that the records captured were accurate. Accordingly, the verified employees have been included on the validated main payroll for the entity … for further management,” he wrote.
Up to 556 of the 725 staff are on Parliament’s Shs31.4b main payroll while 169 contractors are paid from Shs9.6b kitty.

In both the old and new report, AG Muwanga notes that the Commission’s approved wage estimates for 725 staff is Shs42.3b, but the computed payroll is Shs41b, giving a difference of Shs1.3b.
“The excess budget on wages locks the resources which could have been utilised to finance other priorities [and] besides, such funds are prone to abuse,” he said.