KAMPALA – Officials from the Uganda Police Force were quizzed by MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on the whereabouts of the UGX 1.28Bn collected as exhibits in their Non Tax Revenue.
The Police team has appeared before PAC to respond to queries raised by the Auditor-General on the 2017/2019 audit report and during scrutiny into Police’s financial statements, it was established that Police didn’t remit UGX 875 of NRT in 2017 and in 2018, UGX 692m of revenues collected was remitted to the consolidated fund.
This brought the monies not transferred to the consolidated fund to UGX 1.567Bn but only UGX 284M was accounted for leaving a balance of Shs1.282Bn of exhibits unaccounted.
Nandala Mafabi, PAC Chairperson, also asked why not all revenue collected was transferred to the consolidated fund, “The Force collected NTR of UGX 23Bn Non-Tax Revenue 22.4Bn transferred why and yet the law says all Non Tax Revenue should be transferred to the consolidated fund.”
Richard Katongole, Senior Accountant at Police told the Committee that the money wasn’t transferred because it was money in transit, a statement that raised more questions from MPs.
Fredrick Angura (Tororo County South): ”I would have expected that the balance of 2017 which was on transit should have been reflected as money seen transferred. Can you tell us what happened to the collection of 2017 and the deficit?”
Jessica Ababiku (Adjumani Woman) also asked, “I request to have more clarification on how long it takes for money to be on transit.”
Rogers Muhirwa, Under Secretary Police, told the Committee that the Force’s NTR is collected by URA and the Authority simply hands over information on money collected and Police carries out reconciliation with URA information.
Nandala then asked Muhirwa to explain why the revenue collected was retained on collection account yet it is supposed to go to the consolidated fund to which Muhirwa explained, “The Policemen used electricity which was more than required in the budget and there was no way accounting officer would stop officers from going ahead.”
Mathias Mpuuga (Masaka Municipality) again rejected Muhirwa’s explanation reminding the Committee that the budget provided money for utility and the budget doesn’t show Police used the money for electricity.
He said, “No proper explanation has been given towards the destination of NTR. None of these documents shows that. It speaks a lot on how Police fund is being handled if they can’t explain their own accounts and at every page or they are intended to cause confusion or they have no capacity to handle Police Fund.”
With Police failing to explain whereabouts of the exhibit money, MPs called for putting Muhirwa on oath and despite asking for more time to reconcile the figures, Muhirwa failed to come up with a concrete explanation, prompting Asan Kasingye, Chief Political Commissar asked for extra two days, a request that was granted by Parliament.
