By Spy Uganda
The allegations landing on our desk indicate that the Ministry of Finance has already wired Ugx600m to the accounts of Bukedi Cooperative Union without verification or documentation.
According to reports, former parliamentary trade committee chairperson Mpaka Mwine had listed Bukedi among the cooperatives unions with a lot of corruption and accountability problems and therefore paying such a huge amount of money would be a loss to the taxpayer.
These come at a time when Trade Permanent Secretary Geraldine Ssali among others are in jail over similar scandals.
Parliament last year adopted, without debate, the report by the Trade and Tourism Committee on the probe into how funds for Cooperatives were spent. The Committee discovered that payments amounting to UGX 48.77bn were made in excess and outside the allocated amounts to various cooperatives.
The Committee report highlighted that some compensations were made on unverified claims while there was a general lack of appreciation of the rationale for compensation to cooperatives for war losses.
The government has since 2011 been paying large sums of money to cooperative unions to compensate them for whatever they lost during the liberation wars of 1979 and the 1980s. The total money which the government is supposed to pay goes up to 500bn to the different cooperative unions all over the country.
However, last year, Tom Bright Amooti, MP for Kyaka Central expressed concern over a move by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives to disburse more UGX 36.318bn to 18 Cooperative Unions for war loss claims in the last financial year, yet they had recommended a halt of payments.
”Cooperatives were being formed in the night when the money was going to be disbursed the next morning, now at the same time, you are saying you have created new cooperatives, and you want more money to pay cooperatives. What type of cooperatives are we going to pay? asked Amooti.
