Army, police leading water payment defaulters – Report

KAMPALA, UGANDA: Security agencies top the list of government agencies put on the spot for defaulting water bills amounting to nearly 70 billion Shillings.

The Corporation’s Managing Director, Silver Mugisha revealed that during the Financial Year 2021/2022, the Ministry of Defense and Veteran Affairs, Uganda Police Force, and Uganda Prison Services failed to pay their utilities of 27.5 billion; 23.4 billion, and 11.8 billion Shillings respectively.

While appearing before the Public Accounts Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (PAC-COSASE) on Wedensday, Mugisha appealed for adequate budgetary allocations to the security agencies to enable them to meet their water consumption bills.

“The request we put to you as a committee is to impress it upon government institutions especially Prisons, Police and the Defense Ministry to budget for all their water consumption. They have the discretion that they rather budget for travels and the rest but budget less for water,” said Mugisha.

He added that the Corporation has reached a mutual agreement with the Ministry of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development to allocate 43 billion Shillings in the next financial year budget to carter for the arrears within the next three years.

The committee was concerned that there are accusations against the Corporation for poor and irregular payment of salaries to staff, yet, a bigger portion of its revenues are in debt.

Gaffa Mbwatekamwa, the Igara West Member of Parliament in Bushenyi District expressed disappointment that the Ministry of Defense has incurred a huge debt to the Corporation despite being well funded under classified budgets that cater for water utilities.

Ssenyonyi questioned the Corporation’s Managing Director about why they continue to provide services to the defaulting Ministries, Departments, and Agencies – MDAs.

The committee also directed Mugisha to compile and furnish the legislators with a list of all the public and private entities that have accumulated water utility bills to inform the next course of action.

“Give us an analysis of how long an individual entity has not been paying and how big the figure is. We want to look at figures which we can enforce and where we can have influence,” said Hon. Roland Ndyomugyenyi (Indep., Rukiga County).

It should be noted that during the Financial year 2021/2022, the Auditor General failed to audit the NWSC’s financial records after some staff hacked into 17 servers and erased all its revenue records.

During that period, the committee learned that the corporation lost 180 million Shillings and two months to rebuild its critical financial system databases.