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Bigirimana: Some Youth Have Used Livelihood Funds To Marry

The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, Pius Bigirimana has admitted that some beneficiaries of the Youth Livelihood Funds have instead used the money to marry rather than setting up income generating activities.

He also acknowledged that there were ghost groups, but money has since been recovered.

 

Bigirimana made the revelation Tuesday while appearing before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to provide response to audit queries raised in the 2015/2016 audit report, where auditors had raised concerns over absence of the Youth Livelihood projects that had received tax payers’ money.

 

Asked to explain more about the existence of ghost youth groups, Bigirimana said: “We took note of mentioned groups and money has been recovered district by district. We analysed this and categorised groups into four. The first groups are those that changed location. There those groups that changed projects, collapsed completely. Some of the group members got married…..”

 

His response irked the MPs, with PAC Vice Chairperson, Gerald Karuhanga cutting him short.

He asked him to take the Committee seriously, reminding him of the fact that, auditors spent about two months with the Ministry and went further to write management letters. He added that auditors also held an exit meeting to allow the Ministry provide responses to the queries.

 

However, MPs’ responses  angered Bigirimana, who threatened not to provide responses, a threat that didn’t go down well with Karuhanga, who also warned him that the matter being dealt with touches on tax payers’ money and the Accounting Officer has to account for all the funds.

 

“You aren’t giving me opportunity to give you information. Projects are approved by the district through process of identification. The submission is done by CAO when they come to me; I take it that they have been verified,” Bigirimana said.

It should be noted that the  2015/2016 audit report shows that by 30th June 2016, the Youth Livelihood Programme had been implemented for three years, however at the time of audit, there was no proper accounting framework or detailed guidelines for accountability.

 

With the first phase one of YLP kicking off in 2013/2014, so far, Government has injected in Shs58.43bn to 8213 projects by the end of 2015/2016. However, the overall repayment as at 28th October 2016 stood at Shs5.5bn and Shs14.2bn was due to be paid.

 

Still in his report to Parliament, Auditor General, John Muwanga noted that during inspection, audit established that some projects managed by some of the youth groups couldn’t be traced on the ground.

“This was because some of the projects were either non-existent, had been disbanded or members had formed different projects thus presenting challenges of enforcing recoverability. Hence, Shs527, 308,994M which had been released to these specific groups may not be recoverable,” the report read in part.

 

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