Africa-Press – Uganda. On Wednesday State House’s Anti-Corruption Unit arrested two officials of the Departed Asians Property Custodian Board (DAPCB), which was formed to manage properties that were left behind by Asians after President Amin ordered them to leave Uganda, on charges of fraud.
The duo is accused of among other crimes issuing false allocation letters and issuing receipts after extorting money from unsuspecting members of the public.
Whereas arresting the officials is a good move and highly welcome if they were participating in fraudulent activities at DAPCB, the problems at DAPCB will not be resolved by sporadic and random arrests.
Fraud has been going on at DAPCB for a very long time. DAPCB has continued to issue “temporary allocations” even for properties which were either sold or repossessed. Property owners have as a result ended up caught up in ownership disputes with former tenants or those who sell the “temporary allocations” in return for goodwill. There are more than 100 such disputes before the courts in various parts of the country.
The problem though is that the government has been flip flopping on matters around DAPCB. Government has on several occasions set dates by which the Board was meant to have been wound up. The Divestiture Committee had set December 31, 2005. At some point in 2018 Minister Matia Kasaija indicated that it would be wound up at the end of that year, but that never came to pass.
The Board has also been the subject of probes by the National Resistance Council (NRC), the 7th parliament and the 10th parliament, all of which issued reports, whose findings were never acted upon.
The latest report was one by the sub-committee of the committee on Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE) of the 10th parliament.
The committee recommended among others the recovery of properties that were repossessed in the absence of their owners, prosecution of landlords who acquired properties fraudulently, recovery of properties for which the government had compensated their former owners and expedition of the process of winding up DAPCB.
Winding up DAPCB was meant to be preceded by the disposal of all properties under its care. That report has, however, since been put aside by the Attorney General who also questioned the Board’s Divestiture Committee’s powers to repossess, manage or allocate any property that has been dealt with by the Minister of Finance.
The back and forth as far as matters DAPCB are concerned is fast turning out to be a fertile ground for fraud to thrive. We need to act more decisively.
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