Uganda Forum Against Corrupt Entities

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Four years of IGG Beti Kamya drowned the Inspectorate of Government (IG) deeper into oblivion and irrelevancy but it Can be redeemed

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Inspectorate of Government and disadvantages of lacking legal personality

Dear Madam IGG Betty Kamya. I was skeptical when you were appointed as the Inspector General of Government because you lacked relevant experience and I was concerned that you don’t stand for anything. Years back you were in the opposition but when you were offered a seat on the table and the bread crumbs you abadoned whatever you had led us to believe you stood for and joined the government. It is your right to belong to whatever political organisation that you desire but the flip flopping is a dent on your personality. When you joined the ministry of Lands you were not responsible for any single improvement in the most corrupt agency in Uganda. Under your reign the plunder and fraud at the ministry of lands continued unabated. The land management information system was crippled to the point that we still can’t create an account, pay for a search and printout the results at the comfort of our homes. We have to trek to the land office to be extorted by the crooks at the ministry of lands because if you refuse to pay a bribe your search will take two weeks or a month to be returned. Unfortunately we hear whispers of real scandals that you were allegedly responsible for while you were at the Ministry of Lands. The Uganda Land Commission supplemenary budget scandal and the plunder therein that you failed to curb and eliminate is very unfortunate and should have made you ineligible for the position of IGG

Theoretically the Inspectorate of Government is the most powerful public service agency and therefore, its officers must have strong personal independence to effectively exercise its immense powers, which you obviously lacked given your past at the Ministry of Lands. Regardless, I was one of the few people that bought into the narrative that maybe it was time to try a different skill set from the past IGGs who tended to be judicial officers from the Judiciary. I thought maybe you would bring a new perspective to the job and create a more effective Inspectorate of Government. I thought you would adopt modern investigative tactics like undercover operations. I thought you would take advantage of the leadership Code Tribunal to recover illicitly acquired wealth. I thought you would fight for compulsory registration of transactions involving land atleast by public officers. I thought you would use regulations to close loopholes in the legal framework and create opportunities to smoothen and expedite investigative tasks. I thought you would overhaul working procedures at the IG to eliminate bureaucracy and inefficiency. I thought you would eliminate the slackers and crooks at the IG. I thought you would move from reliance on complaints and depend on proactive policing. I thought you would create databases and get access to existing databases to make investigations more thorough and expeditious. I thought you would create deterrence by going after the big fish and low ranking public officers alike. I thought your investigations would swift, expeditious and efficient. I thought you would defend the independence of the IG and ensure that it is respected and feared by public officers. I thought you would pivot to the investigation of property instead of individuals by asking who owns this property and how did he or she finance it’s acquisition and development instead of asking public officers what they own (they will obviously lie and you have no way of proving otherwise). I had endless aspirations for the transformation of the IG and the fight against corruption. Oh boy was I disappointed. Herein, I assessed your performance based on seven criteria. That is to say, improvement in the conditions of employment of IG staff, promoting and strengthening the independence of the IG, high profile prosecutions, asset recovery, adoption of modern investigative techniques and processes, earning public Goodwill and effect on the state of corruption in Uganda. Each of the seven criterion was scored out of ten and the final score for the IGG was 12 out of 70 representing a score of 17%

  • Improvement in the conditions of employment of IG staff. Rank. Average (3/10)

Government agencies are artificial entities that function through employees. A competent, efficient and effective staff is important for the success of any organisation. It is not enough to have good management, an organisation must also have comptent staff. Good management must have transparent and effective hiring policies that identify competent staff and good working conditions that retain talented staff. The IG under Mulyagonja hired staff through a transparent system but the IG under both Mulyagonja and Kamya failed to retain talented staff. There was a disaster called ODA where the IG created expensive supervisor positions in a staff restructuring and then failed to ensure a transparent system of recruiting staff to these positions. Staff that were long rejected by Directors within the institution for laziness and corruption were elevated and promoted. Some staff that had excelled in the interviews were allegedly struck off the list of successful candidates. It appears that less experienced but efficient and talented staff that beat more experienced and preferred candidates were dropped in favour of the preferred candidates. The most shocking part is that these positions were filled using oral interviews without considering the performance of the employees. In an institution where investigations are the primary duty of staff how do you promote staff without considering the quantity and quality of their investigations or other duties. To say that ODA was grossly mismanaged is an under statement.

If that was not enough, recently IGG Kamya decided to transfer staff without considering their performance, personal circumstances and qualifications. If you have staff that are performing optimally in a specific position why on earth who you interfere with the system without good cause. Above all other considerations, out put or productivity is the most paramount consideration. Issues of rotation are secondary to productivity because efficiency and productivity are the bedrock of every successful institution. However to IGG Kamya rotation is more paramount than efficiency and productivity. She rewarded none performers who do not make a significant contribution to the organisation with good duty stations and moved performers to remote duty stations. As if such arbitrariness was not enough the IGG didn’t give Directors and Supervisors any input in the transfer decision. I thought it is obvious that supervisors that have day today interaction with staff have more knowledge of the abilities and contributions of staff than upper management. If that was not bad enough, the employees were not involved in the process. You might think that employers have a right to transfer staff whenever they please but it is also the law that employers have a duty to make reasonable accommodations for their employees to accommodate the special circumstances of the employee including considering factors such as health, religion, family, education and other relevant factors. Consider an employee with a business in a particular area, the employer is obliged to accommodate the employee to stay near his or her business unless it can not be done without undue hardship to the employer. Imagine an employee with a family in Tororo, should the employer simply transfer such an employee to Kabale without considering the cost the employee is likely to incur to visit his or her family? Can the employer consider the employee’s family connections and post such an employee within a reasonable distance of his or her family. Imagine an IG driver who earns UGX 800,000 whose family lives in Mbale but the IG decides to transfer him from Kampala to Fort portal. Why shouldn’t the IG consider his salary and the distance between his duty station and his family and post the driver in Jinja if they must transfer him?. What hardship would the IG face if it considered such special circumstances?. If transfers are necessary what we are advocating for, is not handicapping the process but fairness by considering all the relevant factors.

You obviously wondering why the score awarded is 3/10 given the missteps and unfairness above. Despite all those failings IGG Kamya and her team managed to get a thirty percent increase in salary and allowances for IG staff. Maybe the powers that be thought that it would lower tempers and disappointment over the decision to post Hon. Kamya as IGG. In the IG the appraisal system died long ago. Supervisors give their friends glowing appraisals and the rest are required to justify their performance. In IG more than 30 percent of staff do not complete more than five cases per year especially at head office and in the regional officers staff pile up petty complaints to increase the number of completed investigations. Some IG staff have not recovered a single cent in a decade of their employment. Some IG staff have not submitted a single file for prosecution in a decade of their employment. IG loses more than ten performers per year and if employment opportunities were abundant close to half of the IG staff would prefer to leave. It would remain with the crooks that want to out last others to occupy senior positions as they arise. IG staff are idle, frustrated and oppressed yet the IG has the mandate to combat corruption, promote accountability and good governance.

  • Promoting and strengthening the independence of the IG. Ranking. Below average (0/10)

Apparently IGG Kamya has a promise from President Museveni that should she fall sick she will be airlifted to Germany for first class medical treatment. Apparently she is even not bothered by the deep potholes in Kampala because apparently her V8 can jump over the said potholes. IGG tried to investigate M7s Generals for plundering the funds for fighting locusts but the rumour mill goes that she was forced to apologise to the very thieves she was investigating and she did so. Apparently the security agencies and police are not supposed to declare their wealth and the IG has no powers over them. I don’t remember an amendment to the Constitution to put the security agencies and police outside the jurisdiction of the IG. As I remember it, even M7 himself is subject to the jurisdiction of the IG but triable by Parliament rather than the judiciary. We all know that IGG Kamya is just a pawn of President M7 and his people. She has no independence whatsoever. Let us call a spoon a spoon and not a big spoon. She is incapable of advancing the independence of the IG in anyway.

  • High profile prosecutions. Ranking. Below average (0/10)

Apparently the policy at the IG is to plunder public resources and after some years when you are discovered you are allowed to refund what you stole, retain the proceeds of what you stole and retain your position in public service so that you can plunder more to replace what you have been forced to refund. Of course you are wondering who is responsible for such an idiotic policy. From what we can discern is its the big lady, IGG Kamya herself. So I can steal two billion shillings, use it for five years. Earn another two billion from it and in the end refund the two billion shillings that I stole with no interest or even a fine and keep the two billion shillings that I made from the stolen money. I incur no penalty for stealing the money. I don’t have to give up any part of the gain or income I have accrued from the money and I am allowed to keep my job so that I can plunder more money. The cycle of impunity and plundering goes on and on. Of course the costs of investigating me are not accounted for and the loss, suffering and pain the tax payer suffered in form of poor service delivery, death and other losses are not a concern to anyone. I was cunning, brilliant and hardworking for using my position to become rich. So in two years we have no single high profile prosecution. We have no high profile arrest. We have no high profile confiscated property. We basically have nothing to show for two years of combating corruption. We have no detterence. All we have are our V8s that can jump over potholes and a promise to be sent to Germany for treatment should we get any complications.

  • Asset recovery. Ranking. Below average (1/10)

According to research by the IG, Uganda loses UGX 20 Trillion annually to corruption. As a bare minimum you should be able to recover atleast half trillion shillings every year but you can not even manage to recover ten billion shillings annually. The sky scrappers, factories, apartments and other assets owned by the crooks are widely known but you don’t touch them. You probably cruise past them in your V8 every day as you head to your mansion. You have a large database of properties owned by public servants but you lack the imagination to recover illicitly acquired property. Do you know that you and your deputies are illegally not paying income. The way I understand the law is that income tax exemptions are granted by Parliament under its legislative powers and it has never granted either you or your deputies such an exemption. Now I hear you are exempting members of the military from declaring their wealth without first amending the IG Act or the Constitution. What is most disappointing is that the IG is supposed to promote good governance and the rule of law.

Even when illicitly acquired property is reported the IG is afraid of going after those that are connected and powerful. Even when the IG does investigate these properties it lacks the tools and techniques to successfully recover the illicitly acquired wealth. We all know that a big percentage of properly investigated cases die an artificial death somewhere in the system at the Inspectorate of Government. Your legal department simply inefficient and potentially corrupt but for two years you have failed to reorganize it and improve it’s performance. Per your own admission in your report to Parliament only Shs7.99 billion was recovered between January 2022 and June 2023, despite Uganda losing Shs10 trillion annually to corruption. Even the mindless diehard supporters must admit that such performance is completely inadequate.

  • Adoption of modern investigative techniques and processes. Rank. Below average (3/10)

We thought that the Inspectorate of Government under your tenure would adopt modern investigative techniques such as undercover operations and active policing but you are still stuck with the complaint system. You get to know corruption years after the trail has run cold, after the illicitly acquired Mony has been laundered and integrated into the financial system and is virtually unrecoverable. The good actionable tips and complaints are far between and when you do get them the prosecutions are compromised by your legal department. Undercover operations and active policing create detterence, regulations allow you to close loopholes in the law and adopt new procedures and tactics. Investigating assets allows you to shift the burden of proof and take advantage of tax law. Databases allow you to exepidite investigations and ease access to information. I heard to you started on spot inspections but they are poorly planned and executed. A good undercover operation requires planning and skillful execution to uncover credible and admissible evidence either in a civil or criminal trial. As you are stuck with antiqueted investigative techniques, the crooks are innovative new ways to plunder public resources. Did you know that they can ocastrate the closure of a money laundering bank, Sue the central bank and get a case through the judicial system within months yet ordinarily it would take half a decade. The syndicate lives!

  • Earning public Goodwill. Rank below average (3/10)

Hon Kamya your adminstration is below average on this criteria because I have seen two of your own staff reporting corruption to the State House Anti-corruption taskforce. With its rogue and unprofessional conduct Colonel Nakalema’s taskforce managed to win the hearts and minds of Ugandans including your own staff even though the IG does superior work to her.

Ugandans are suffering under the heavy yoke of corruption. We want effective public service delivery. We want good schools. We want quality health care. We want an efficient judiciary. We want good infrastructure and we want to be treated fairly when get in conflict with the law and our rights to be respected. So when we hear from the IGG we do not expect tales of how she will be flown to Germany for medical treatment by the president and how she flies over potholes with our V8. You are supposed to be combating corruption on our behalf so that we don’t remain victims of corruption. When you fall sick you should die in Mulago on the floor with no one to attend to you just any of us. If you do your job right, there will be drugs, beds, equipment and medical officers to attend to you in Mulago. Why would you need to fly to Germany yet we have a state of the art hospital right here in the banana republic of Uganda. When we see you on television we expect tales of how you you are on the brink of arresting General Muhoozi for illegally participating in political activities yet he is an active military officer. We want to hear about the big fish you have in custody for plundering public resources. We to want to hear about the number of arrests you made the previous week. We want to hear about the properties you impounded in the previous week and the number you project to impound the next week. We expect to hear about the billions of shillings you have recovered the previous week and the billions you project you will recover in the current month.

  • Effect on the state of corruption in Uganda. Rank below average (2/10)

In the banana republic of Uganda, we idolize the corrupt. We praise them as cunning and hardworking. When a corrupt person is caught and prosecuted our kin and tribes start calling for forgiveness and reconciliation. We are proud of sons and daughters who enrich themselves through plundering public resources. We call them all kinds of big titles, give them front seats in church and applaud their brilliance and innovativenes. We do not exercise our mental faculties to think about how this young boy has a amassed wealth on low public service salaries. I didn’t not hear a whisper from IG Kamya when the speaker of Parliament bought a half billion shillings Ranger Rover for her hubby or when Hon. Anite is rumoured to own a multi billion shillings hotel in Arua city. We have no hope that corruption will be seriously addressed any time soon and any one that believes in the Kamya administration is either a fool or is deluded or a beneficiary of corruption.

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