5 Luwero head teachers ordered to refund Shs 24m missing UPE funds

Luwero district has ordered five head teachers to refund over Shs 24 million that they failed to account.

The missing funds were meant for purchasing educational materials, facilitating co-curricular activities and administrative costs were disbursed under the third and fourth quarters of financial year 2022/23.  

They were allocated under the Universal Primary Education (UPE) program. The implicated head teachers are from Kyampisi primary school who failed to account for 6.02 million, Kaswa primary school (Shs 5.08 million), Kibanyi primary school (Shs 5 million), Sambwe Orthodox primary school (Shs 4.27 million), and Monde Roman Catholic primary school (Shs 3.8 million). 

Erukamu Wamala Kyoole, chairperson of Luwero district public accounts committee, says that the head teachers failed to provide proper accountability for the funds during their assessments by the internal auditor and the committee. Some head teachers reportedly disregarded UPE grant guidelines and the Public Finance Management Act in their expenditure of the allocated funds. 

Consequently, the committee recommended that the CAO recovers the funds and consider demoting the headteachers. Bernard Okello, Luwero district human resource officer, confirmed that letters have been sent to the headteachers, demanding the refund of the funds, with further disciplinary actions pending. 

“Last week we instituted mechanisms to recover the money from the headteachers’ salaries. Even those that are retired, we shall stop their pension till they pay the money,’’ Okello said.

Luwero LC V chairman Erastus Kibirango emphasized that this recovery aims to enforce proper utilization of allocated funds by headteachers. He underlined that mismanagement will result in the district reclaiming the funds, even post-retirement.   

“As the district council, we resolved that that money be deducted from their salaries which has been done. The CAO did not wait, he went by the resolutions we passed earlier. We hope that this is going to be an eye-opener for all civil servants who are interested in misusing our money. This one goes even to those people who have retired because the policy is very clear. The law is very clear where you make the government to lose money even if it is how many years, we shall be coming back to you. Let people understand this, it can be 20 years or more but once it is discovered that you misused money, the government will not look aside…So they should do as required to avoid such embarrassment,” said Kibirango.

Last year, the district public accounts committee recommended the recovery of Shs 30 million from seven headteachers who also failed to account for UPE funds.