By Weswa Ronnie
MBALE CITY
The Mbale City Town Clerk, Assy Abireebe Tumwegira, on Wednesday, 20th August, 2025 faced intense questioning by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) at the Mbale District Head Office, Lukhobo Hall.
The committee was investigating the payment of staff who had been absent from duty for about a month.
Gilbert Olanya, the Chairperson of PAC, asked Tumwegira to explain why he had caused loss of taxpayers’ money by paying health workers who were not on duty for a whole month.
According to the Auditor General’s report, over 100 million shillings was paid to health workers at different facilities in the 2025/26 financial year, despite their absence from work, as indicated in the arrival books.
Olanya described this as a form of high-level corruption, where workers are paid without providing services.
Tumwegira requested the City Health Officer, Moses Mugonyi, to provide an explanation for the health workers’ absence. Mugonyi claimed that the health workers were actually working night shifts and were therefore unable to work during the day.
However, Olanya asked the PAC legal team to scrutinize the evidence presented by the Health Officer and the Town Clerk to verify whether the health workers had indeed worked.
Mbale City had other contentious issues before the PAC, including low local revenue generation at the Mbale Central Market, street parking, and offloading, which required careful consideration.
In other districts, such as Butaleja, the Chief Finance Officer (CFO) failed to appear before the committee, and the entire district team, led by the CAO, was summoned to make a police statement over corruption allegations.
In Sironko, Nelson Kiranda, the Chief Administrative Officer, and his team faced questions over the refund of part of 1 billion shillings in road funds to the national treasury in the previous financial year. After providing explanations, they were let to go.
