{UAH} Is this what people may call an educated fool ? I am just asking.
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Parliament pins institute boss over nepotism
Posted Sunday, March 22 2015 at 02:00
In Summary
Implicated. UIRI executive director is accused of recruiting 20 staff out of 25 without advertising the jobs.
PARLIAMENT.
Parliament will not approve the Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI) budget for this year unless the institute explains findings in the Auditor General's report which pointed out nepotism and abuse of procurement rules at the research agency.
Parliament's Public Accounts Committee on Thursday evening tabled a report implicating Prof Charles Kwesiga, the UIRI executive director, over nepotism and abuse of procurement laws.
He was accused of nepotism for recruiting 20 staff out of 25 without advertising the jobs while he would also reportedly dole out contracts without following procurement rules and release money for projects whose contracts had expired or had no contract at all.
Prof Kwesiga's irregular operations at UIRI were discovered by the Auditor General in his report tracking the institute's cash flows between June 2011 and 2012.
"The accounting officer was presiding over a nepotic and inherently unfair system. This was in violation of the institute's own human resource manual, "the report pinned Prof Kwesiga, recommending that he should be investigated for "nepotism and appropriate disciplinary action taken".
A manpower audit will also be carried out to weed out all those whose recruitment was questionable with a view of terminating their employment and paving the way for fresh competitive recruitment.
Prof Kwesiga is also held responsible for a contract price that rose from Shs34m to Shs46m, leading to a possible loss of Shs12m. The professor is also accused of leading 18 projects without Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) while other projects were still benefiting from government money with expired contracts.
The report also blames him for flouting procurement laws by using restricted domestic bidding to award a Shs121m contract to a single party to complete a floor at the institute, effectively eliminating competitive bidding.
"The institute entered into contract to supply metallic casts at Shs34m but the contract price was later varied to Shs46b (32 per cent) more than the PPDA requirement for only 15 per cent.
The committee recommended that the accounting officer be held responsible for breach of procurement laws," the report recommends.
Kaberamaido District Woman MP Florence Ekwau said Prof Kwesiga should be prosecuted for mismanaging the institute.
"This manager should be arrested immediately. How do you have managers running the country like this? I can summarise this report as lack of management,"Ms Ekwau said.
Ms Amelia Kyambadde, the Trade and Industry minister whose docket covers UIRI, was not unavailable to shed light on what is going wrong at the Institute.
However, the Speaker of Parliament, Ms Rebecca Kadaga, ruled that the institute must table a treasury memorandum detailing how cash allocations have been spent.
"You come here with a treasury memoranda within one month. If you don't, we are not going to appropriate money for UIRI for this financial year. We are giving you one month to respond to the issues that were raised in this report. If it does not come, no money," Ms Kadaga ruled.
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