The Minister for the Presidency has directed Resident District Commissioners (RDCs), Resident City Commissioners (RCCs), and officials to intensify the monitoring of public projects, strengthen accountability, and crack down on corruption as part of a renewed government campaign to improve service delivery.
The directive comes amid an ongoing nationwide inspection of government programmes by Local Government Minister Balaam Barugahara Ateenyi whose countrywide monitoring exercise has already resulted in the interdiction of several accounting officers, district engineers and other local government officials, while others have been arrested over alleged corruption, poor supervision and abuse of office.
The latest measures also reinforce President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s anti-corruption agenda. At the beginning of his current term in office, Museveni declared it would be a “term of no more sleep,” warning public officials that laxity, corruption and poor service delivery would no longer be tolerated.
In a ministerial statement issued on Thursday, Minister for the Presidency Milly Babirye Babalanda said the directives followed the President’s renewed emphasis on combating corruption, which the government describes as one of the biggest obstacles to Uganda’s socio-economic transformation.
The minister said government institutions must ensure that public funds allocated to infrastructure, health, education, agriculture, water, electricity and other development programmes deliver tangible benefits to citizens.
The government acknowledged that corruption, poor supervision, weak accountability and negligence continue to undermine public investments through abandoned projects, inflated contracts, delayed implementation, poor workmanship, ghost projects and fraudulent payments.
Under the new directives, RDCs and RCCs have been instructed to strengthen continuous monitoring of all government-funded projects from planning and procurement through implementation, completion and commissioning. They are also required to maintain updated project monitoring registers detailing implementation progress, contractor performance, project challenges and recommended interventions, with regular reports submitted to the Office of the President.
The minister warned that government would no longer tolerate abandoned projects, unexplained delays or contractors who fail to meet agreed standards. The statement also announced stricter measures against corruption in public administration, particularly in recruitment and procurement.
Babalanda condemned reports of public jobs allegedly being sold at both central and local government levels, stressing that recruitment into public service must remain transparent, competitive and merit-based. Accounting officers, procurement officials and technical staff were warned against colluding with contractors to certify or authorize payment for incomplete or non-existent works.
Government further directed that all cases involving bribery, procurement fraud, abuse of office, ghost workers, ghost projects, inflated contracts, diversion of public funds and falsification of accountability records be investigated and reported to the relevant authorities. URN