By Peter Ssebulime
Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have blamed government over its failure to constitute the Leadership Code Tribunal, which has made it difficult for the Inspectorate Government to dispose of cases, attend to appeals and adjudicate in arbitrations for government officials who are involved in corruption.
Cissy Kagaba, the Executive Director Anti Corruption Coalition Ugand (ACCU), who also heads CSOs, on Tuesday said a recent study titled ‘Assessing the Status of Implementation Of the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act 2010 and the Leadership Code Act 2002,’ exposes government’s weakness in this matter.
The law provides for the protection of the person who provides information to the IGG but this is not practical in Uganda and many whistleblowers have instead been exposed to people they leak intelligence about.
“It was also observed during the study that lack of trust from the public towards state institutions has led to would-be whistleblowers reporting the matter to more than one institution, which creates overlaps that lead to commitment of time and huge resources while following the same leads that could only have been done once, had trust been there,” Kagaba said.
The Act provides that 5% of all monies recovered will be awarded at the successful prosecution of a corruption-related manner to the Whistleblower, but this value is not sufficient to cover the act of whistleblowers, since the cost of silence outweighs that of reporting, in a number of cases.
Kagaba said they have since called upon government to urgently enact a Witness Protection law to complement the current Whistleblowers’ Protection Act and to extensively promote public awareness about these laws, enhancement of penalties from disclosure of confidential information provided by whistleblowers, incease funding for the Inspectorate of Government and create an Anti-corruption Institute like the Directorate of Ethics and Integrity and invest in training staff from various government and private institutions.
They also demanded the establishment of a central body for the protection of whistleblowers that are trusted, which is independent and well facilitated to take care of the security of whistleblowers.
