PAC halts review of Trade Ministry’s audit report amid accusations by Permanent Secretary
It should be noted that last year, the state minister for Trade, Harriet Ntababazi revealed that up to 30 legislators were facing criminal investigation over their alleged role in the embezzlement UGX164Bn, meant for compensation to the Cooperative Societies.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has halted the consideration of the Ministry of Trade’s December 2023 Auditor General report, after Geraldine Ssali, the Permanent Secretary, accused the Auditor General, of authoring a biased report.
This was after the Ministry officials were accused of refusing to handover documents about the accountability for cooperatives compensation funds, during the audit exercise.
Muwanga Kivumbi (Butambala County) accused the Ministry of Trade of trying to impeach the powers of both the Committee and Parliament when she questioned the authenticity of the auditor general’s report, instead of seeking for a legal opinion from the Attorney General on how to address her concerns on the report and instead opted to use desk office lawyers.
However, Ssali denied accusations of attempting to impeach powers of Parliament noting, “I don’t even want to use the word impeachment because I remember how that word was over used in the US, it was alien to me, it isn’t anything that we intended to impeach powers of Parliament in anyway and it isn’t possible that we can do that. If our submissions came out in any way to suggest that, insinuate we apologize for that.”
Ssali also accused the Attorney General, Kiryowa Kiwanuka of ignoring her two requests for legal interpretation on how the Ministry of Trade should proceed with Cooperatives and how her Ministry was meant to disburse money to third parties, saying the two times she sought for an opinion, she never got a written response.
“I didn’t think it was fair for the Auditor General to say that records of the coorporative unions were missing and I think there was a miscommunication between my office and Auditor General office but at that time when records were requested, of the 8 cooperatives were requested, they were given,” said Ssali.
It should be noted that last year, the state minister for Trade, Harriet Ntababazi revealed that up to 30 legislators were facing criminal investigation over their alleged role in the embezzlement UGX164Bn, meant for compensation to the Cooperative Societies.
In the same year parliament adopted without debate, the report by the Trade and Tourism Committee on the probe into how funds for Cooperatives were pent. The Committee discovered that payments amounting to UGX 48.77bn were made in excess and outside the allocated amounts to various cooperatives.
The Committee report highlighted that some compensations were made on unverified claims, while there was a general lack of appreciation of the rationale for compensation to cooperatives for war losses.
