The Parliamentary Committee on Public Accountability was on Thursday handed over the Accounting Officers of Ministry of Health, Diana Atwine and Ronald Ssegawa, to the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (CID) of Parliament to make a statement on the unlawful expenditure of Shs6.5bn.
Atwine, the Permanent Secretary and her Undersecretary Ssegawa had appeared before the Public Accountability Committee (PAC) on Thursday to account for Shs1.7bn and Shs4.8bn misappropriated in Financial Years 2016/17 and 2017/18 respectively.
According to Atwine, the Shs6.5bn was used in projects where the government was supposed to give in a hand but the money had not yet been transacted which made her use that money.
Such projects include Mulago Specialised Women and Neonatal Hospital, Main Mulago hospital, Yumbe and Kayunga hospitals which needed to be worked on immediately.
However, her explanation just angered MPs, who asked her and Ssegawa who granted them permission to use money allocated for one project on another.
Unfortunately, both had no answers.
“This is misappropriation and diversion of public resources,” said the committee members.
She would later tweet; “My dear friends I am in office working .Dont worry some people are settling their scores. The truth will exonerate us.”
Okin Ojara, the acting chairperson of PAC was forced to adjourn the meeting for 20 minutes so that Atwine can go and write a statement at the CID directorate of Parliament on the unlawful expenditure of over Shs6.5bn.
Kwania County’s Tony Ayo said; “As Parliament passes the budget, ministries, government authorities and agencies are supposed to provide their work upon which the budget is passed and approved. So when they are implementing this budget they are supposed to follow the work plan which they showed in the Parliament. However, for the case of Health PS in F/Y2016/17, there is a miss-charge where money appropriated for buying vehicles was used instead to pay allowances.”
Ayo explained that by the time of budgeting, Atwine did not inform Parliament while diverting this money which a sign of disrespect towards Parliament.
“In the Public Finance Management Act, no one is allowed to divert money without the approval of the Parliament. In any case if one wants to change, he/she needs to come and take supplements then you picking money from other programs,” he said.
Also in the financial year, 20117/18, Shs4.8bn was diverted. According to Ayo, the committee wants Atwine to explain why exactly she diverted that money and what that made her forego the critical projects that were planned for it in the budget.
“We want the CID to go into details of those facts because we can’t do it from here. It’s the CID who will go and see if that money did what they have told and it must total to Shs4.8bn and Shs1.7bn respectively. Then she will come back here and we see how to deal with that,” Ayo added.
Ministry of Health spokesman Emmanuel Ainebyoona, said Atwine is currently back in her office, adding that she used the money to facilitate counterpart funding.
This is when government is supposed to provide funds but then delay yet there is some money lying idle.
“This is the money she used in order to complete projects that were critically needed by the public,” he said.
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