By Andrew Irumba
Kampala: The Uganda Police Criminal Investigations Directorate is finalizing plans to investigate wealth of Police officers, after intelligence leaked that there are several policemen and officers secretly amassing wealth.
The CID Director Grace Akullo revealed this on Wednesday while speaking at a Public dialogue on Enhancing Collective Action in Uganda’s Anti-corruption effort, held at Hotel Africana in Kampala. The law requires senior Government officials to declare their income, assets and liabilities routinely through the inspectorate of government, as a measure to stop corruption. Under the police, the law requires that only officers above the rank of two stars declare their wealth. However, Akullo wants lower ranking Police officers to declare their wealth under provisions of the Leadership Code act.
As a consequence of this, those who refuse, ignore, under-declare and try to own properties through 3rd parties shall thus have to be investigated, until the CID establish why such officers don’t want to declare their wealth. This implies that the bracket covers the Inspector General of Police-IGP, the Deputy Inspector General-DIGP, Assistant Inspector General OF Police-AIGP, Senior Commissioner of Police -SCP, Commissioner of Police-CP, Assistant Commissioner of Police-ACP, Senior Superintendent of Police-SSP, and Superintendent of police-SP. It leaves out officers at the rank of Inspector of Police –IP, who are practically in charge of Police Posts, and supervision, Assistant Inspector of Police- AIP’s who are considered third level supervisors, Sergeants- who Head Station Discipline and, and the first level supervisors at the rank of corporal.
It also leaves out police constables, who man the communications, station diaries, cells guard, the armoury and are in charge of patrols and the Special Police Constable, the lowest rank in the police. The development come after Akullo’s directorate receiving intelligence that several officers involved in arrests, searches and handling of exhibits use the exposure to suspects to amass wealth and steal from them with impunity, while others receive hefty bribes from suspects to ‘kill’ cases. Ali Munira, the Spokesperson of the Inspectorate of Government welcomed the proposal and noted that the stated officials need to keep declaring their wealth as further proposals come in to fine tune the laws.
