By Kirinya Ayub
MBALE CITY
The former Mbale City Deputy Town Clerk Kenneth Khatuli Waniaye has been implicated in an influence-peddling and revenue diversion scandal.
Khatuli is said to have used a company where he was a co-director to secure an advertising contract worth Shs129m from Mbale City.
Khatuli is the Deputy Town Clerk for Jinja City, a Job he assumed in February this year.
Fatina Kato, a businesswoman told the Mbale City Public Accounts Committee during a probe last week that Khatuli used her company called 256 to secure a contract and collect revenue worth Shs129m in advertising fees that the money was channeled through her company account in Housing Finance Bank to Khatuli.
The Mbale City Public Accounts Committee Chairperson Rogers Kimaswa said during the grilling of the city public officers over local revenue that a lot of money has been lost to quasi-contractors involving technical staff.
He said that the committee will summon Khatuli to explain himself how he used his company to swindle council money noting that his actions if found true amount to influence peddling and conflict of interest in contradiction with the leadership code of conduct, the Anti-corruption Act, and the Public Procurement Act.
Meanwhile, the committee has also issued arrest warrants to four staff members of the council including the Probation and Welfare Officer Dominic Wanzira, the Human Resource Officer, the Principal Environment Officer Rhoda Nyaribi, and Senior City Engineer Jonson Gimuyi after they failed to defend expenditures totaling to Shs170m.
The acting City Engineer failed to account for Shs5 million. Gimuyi claimed that he spent the funds to pay councilors’ allowances during monitoring of projects but controversy ensued when some of the councilors who were invited to verify the receipt dissociated themselves from the claim saying the monitoring never took place.
Mbale city has for the past years been grappling with poor service delivery attributed to revenue leakages and corruption.
In the previous financial year, the city council projected to collect over shillings 3.7billlion but they failed to realize the money as it was anticipated.
