Minister of State for Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, Hon. Musa Echweru
Besides the emergence of embezzlement scandals, inflating refugee numbers, the office of the Prime Minister has again been hit with a fresh shs 8bn scandal.
According to news reaching our desk reveals that officers in the government’s top most office were involved in procurement a wetland with a forged land title at a tune of shs 8bn which is likely to disappear like lightening.
It should be noted that this scandal has emerged at a point when the United Nations (UN) has just urged government to expeditiously investigate the matter related corruption in the office, mismanagement of humanitarian assistance to refugees and take action.
Last week, Opposition’s Dr. Kiiza Besigye called upon the general public not to worry about the ongoing refugee crisis scandals citing that it’s not a shock that the country has registered ghost refugees and mismanagement of their humanitarian assistance.
Besigye noted that’s the trend of operation in the entire ruling National Resistance Movement regime where everything is fake beginning from the government its self.
“GHOST”- schools, teachers, students, soldiers etc is a well-known feature of the NRM Junta! Why the fuss about “ghost refugees” by EU?” Besigye highlighted.
In the same plea, European Union has opened investigations into allegations of corruption in refugee assistance programmes in Uganda where the head of European Union delegation in Uganda confirmed that it has formally submitted the case to the EU’s anti-fraud office (OLAF) for investigation.
OLAF investigates a wide range of wrongdoings from embezzlement, fraudulent claims and misconduct in public procurement procedures, to customs fraud. It also helps the authorities responsible for managing EU funds inside and outside the EU to understand fraud types, trends, threats and risks, and to protect the EU’s financial interests by preventing fraud of all kinds.
There are allegations that officials at the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) have been swindling money meant for refugees operations in Uganda.
Complaints also indicate that OPM officials in connivance with aid workers have been inflating refugee figures in order to attract more aid which is then corruptly shared. The allegations were reportedly raised by South Sudan refugees to UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, while on a visit to Uganda last week.
The EU statement says the allegations were brought immediately to the attention of the government of Uganda.
The statement says the UNHCR and the World Food Programme have duly informed the EU about the allegations. It says the EU has been coordinating closely with the aid agencies and other donors with the OPM to get a clear understanding of what it calls “these troubling allegations”.
