Ethics and Integrity minister Simon Lokodo defends plans to spend over 117 billion shillings annually on a new Government strategy to combat corruption. The new strategy involves a coordinated approach to fight corruption by all anti corruption agencies under the new Zero Tolerance to Corruption policy passed by cabinet

Lokodo says that the money in question is needed to address the existing gaps to fight corruption including sensitizing Ugandans to reject corruption. Minister Lokodo insists that it’s more important to spend that money to confront those stealing a lot of resources which affects service delivery

One of the key pillars in the strategy is to set up independent anti corruption units in all Government departments to monitor and counter corruption. Currently such a duty is vested into internal auditing units. But minister Lokodo says that all such arrangements have been compromised and that the new units will be more viable

Fr Lokodo said some of the funds have already been disbursed. “We studied the budgets of all the implementing agencies involved in the fight against corruption and realised that much of the money has been released. We are now left with a deficit of about Shs11b to have the policy working,” he said.

Fr Lokodo said the European Union has so far given government Shs 3.1b to establish the Leadership Code tribunal. He said the tribunal should have been established shortly after the amendment of the Leadership Code Act last year, but did not take off because of lack of funds.

“We hope the Ministry of Finance will release the Shs3.7b which we had requested earlier for operational costs,” the minister said. The Leadership Code Amendment Bill, 2017, provides for the establishment of a leadership Code Tribunal to handle all issues related to failures to comply with the code.
 

The new policy places the different government agencies charged with fighting corruption in three different tiers, each with a different role to play. 

Tier one: This comprises core anti-corruption institutions. They include the IGG and police, among others, which are mandated to promote and enhance transparency and accountability in the delivery of public services and combat corruption.

These bodies will create a conducive environment to protect people from errant public and private officials. The agencies will also undertake investigation, prosecution and punishment in the anti-corruption processes. 

Tier two: These are institutions charged with oversight and accountability roles: They include the Ministry of Finance, and Public Service, which are responsible for setting up of management and accountability standards. Others are service commissions, Local Government and Parliament, among others.
Tier three: Under this category, institutions include all the other MDAs which should embrace the anti-corruption fight from a preventive perspective.