Residents of Ntungamo district in Western Uganda have expressed displeasure over poor service delivery by the local government leadership.
Recently, the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) named Ntungamo as the worst performing District with 64percent in terms of absorption and utilization of funds country wide.
The ranking is contained in the committee on Local governments report for the financial year 2021/2022 released recently.
Residents fault Ntungamo Chairperson, Samuel Mucunguzi Rwakigoba, the Office of Chief administrative officer (CAO) and the speaker for falling short on their duties. According to the PAC report, failure to absorb funds means denial of services to the public because planned activities remain on paper.
While interacting with our reporter, the former secretary for finance and Councilor Ntungamo Subcounty, Naboth Mpirirwe said that they had a committee meeting on Finance planning and administration where by office of the CAO through Human resources office (HR) told them that Ntungamo District is likely to return UGX2 billions to the government coffers at the end of this financial year for salaries and wages.
Mpiriwe said that they found more than 150 files in the service commission and those people never got promotions and the district never implemented a restructuring plan. He therefore said that poor performance is due entirely to weak leadership of the civil service because of malice and politics.
“I don’t blame new CAO’S cause they’re new but it’s like they’re willing to help us but I don’t know what changes after, it means that our political wing is poor.”
Mpirirwe however said that they advised District Chairperson to have a consultative meeting which he declined.
Asuman Muhangi a member of ‘Make Ntungamo Greater Again” WhatsApp forum said that there is no passion under the leaders of Ntungamo, they are in leadership for their selfish gains. He said that poor performance in Ntungamo District is attributed by the corruption among leaders from Bottom to top.
The District leadership led by Rwakigoba and CAO Mathias Ndifuna while reacting to the UGX2 billion to be back on the treasury, they are putting blame on money coming late.
In the financial year 2020/2021, Ntungamo ranked at 102, and 2021/2022 Ntungamo came in the 146th position.
Last year, Ntungamo district was spotted with a number of ghost health centers, paying employees not in service, overpaying selected employees, paying full payments and duty allowances to officials who are interdicted, paying duty allowances to substantive employees to some individuals who are not acting in any position among others.
The accusations prompted the State House Anti-Corruption Health Monitoring Unit to deploy to the ground where a number of district officials were arrested for involvement in corruption-related activities.
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