Africa-Press – Uganda. Over a billion shillings of COVID-19 relief funds meant to cushion the urban vulnerable during the pandemic-prompted lockdown in 2021 ended up in the pockets of ineligible individuals, denying rightful beneficiaries much-needed rescue, a forensic investigation by the Auditor General (AG) has established.
At the height of the pandemic in 2021, the government set aside Shs54b to be shared among the urban poor in cities and municipalities across the country, the majority of whom were left out of work by the containment measures instituted to curb the spread of the virus.
According to the report, however, Shs1.5b of the funds was given to civil servants, and private sector employees, while other monies were paid to some unspecified persons irregularly due to a technical glitch.
“A total of Shs784.8 million of the Covid-19 cash relief meant for vulnerable persons was irregularly paid to 7,662 civil servants who were earning a salary from the Consolidated Fund outside the vulnerable categories defined by the Cabinet,” the report states.
“Funds amounting to Shs192.97m were irregularly paid out to 1,884 beneficiaries that were employed in the Private Sector,” it adds.
Post Bank, which was charged with disbursing funds to beneficiaries’ mobile money accounts paid out Shs615.68m “erroneously… to 6,011 beneficiaries,” the forensic report indicates. Our attempts to get an explanation about the erroneous payout from the bank were futile by press time. The same bank has been in the spotlight over glitches in the disbursement of Parish Development Model Funds.
The report, however, falls short of details into who the ineligible persons are, how they received money, or if they could be traced.
The Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, together with the Office of the Prime Minister, which superintended over the process, delegated registration of eligible beneficiaries in identified vulnerable categories to town clerks.
There are 11 cities, and 31 municipalities in the country.
The categories included bus and taxi drivers, conductors, loaders, boda boda riders, salon operators, slum dwellers, orphans, and vulnerable children. Others were private school teachers, artists, bar attendants, and street vendors, among others. Each household was to receive Shs100,000. A diversion or loss of shs1.5 billion means approximately 15,000 households were locked out.
Mr Aggrey Kibenge, the Permanent Secretary at the Gender Ministry, said the town clerks were solely responsible for who received cash and should, therefore, answer for the inconsistencies.
“That is a question that should go to the town clerks because they were the ones who were registering…they were given the responsibility to identify the beneficiaries based on guidelines we gave. They had full responsibility over the people they registered,”Mr Kibenge said.
He added that the verification of vulnerability before payment was difficult, due to the limitations caused by the pandemic and the urgency with which it was supposed to be implemented.
“In the guidelines we gave, nobody who was earning a salary was supposed to be a beneficiary of the Covid relief…We had an online system that relied on the data that was submitted with the verification of the town clerks. We were dealing with an emergency. If people are hungry, you are not going to spend a month trying to verify that data,” he said.
Defence
“Once the data came from the urban authorities, it was relayed to the ministry authorities where we had a centre that was managing all this data. We would then remit that data to the telephone companies to verify the names under which the telephone numbers were registered. Once they confirmed that the names, NINs, and telephone numbers were rhyming we would give instructions to Post Bank to pay that person. Where the system rejected on account of a mismatch, those are the ones that were rejected. We were only paying those cleared by that system, and those had to be submitted by the town clerks,” Mr Aggrey Kibenge, the PS at the Gender Ministry.
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