BUTEBO, UGANDA: The Butebo district Chief Administrative Officer James Luyimba, and the Rubirizi principal human resource officer Doreen Tusiime, have been arrested by the office of the Inspectorate of Government.
The two are accused of abuse of office, embezzling funds, and causing financial loss to the government.
Luyimba was picked by a team of detectives from his current station in Butebo district, while Tusiime was picked from Rubirizi district.
Luyimbazi who was the Chief Administrative officer Rubirizi district between 2019 and 2020 is accused of conniving with Tusiime, the principal human resource officer in charge of salaries and pensions to defraud the government.
Fredrick Okech, the Mbarara regional inspector says they received a complaint from a whistleblower who had retired from civil service and was waiting for his gratuity of 28 million shillings.
He says the whistleblower reported that the principal human resource officer (Tusiime) had asked him to cooperate and allow her to deposit 40 million shillings instead of 28 million shillings, then withdraw 12 million shillings and give it to her.
He says this sparked an investigation into the Rubirizi district payroll where they discovered that 78 newly recruited primary school teachers had received money above their salary scale.
Okech adds that during their investigations, they discovered that out of the 78 teachers that received the excess money, 23 returned 26 million shillings to her through mobile money while others returned 73 million to her in cash. This he says is what the teachers openly told the investigators.
Tusiime is also accused of including her sister Mercy Mpiirwe on the government payroll as a secondary school teacher at St. Michael High School and paying 15 million shillings for one year which was well known to the accounting officer Luyimbazi.
Okech says Mpiirwe has also been arrested and these will appear in the Anti-Corruption court in Kampala to answer to charges of abuse of office, embezzling funds, and causing financial loss to the government.
According to the 2018 IGG’s report titled Bi-annual Inspectorate performance report to parliament that was based on the complaints raised by citizens against district officials, Rubirizi was ranked the least corrupt district followed by Ntoroko while Kampala and Wakiso ranked the first.
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