The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has quizzed is the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) over its poor planning after the Auditor General reported that although the Directorate received all Shs23Bn for handling of 5000 case files for committal to the High Court, only 1996 files were handled yet all the funds were spent, despite the dismal performance.
The probe into DPP’s budgeting capabilities was led by Muwanga Kivumbi, Chairperson Public Accounts Committee, where the DPP had been summoned to respond to the queries raised in the 2023/24 Auditor General’s report, that highlighted the dismal performance of the DPP that year.
“You had an activity, committal of 5000 new general cases for trial to the High Court, you only succeeded to commit 1996 new general cases to the High Court that means the difference you didn’t do yet you got the full amount of money for that activity and you spent it. What you explained in your report was academic, where did you put our money?” asked Kivumbi.
Agnes Kainza, Undersecretary Office of the Directorate of Public Prosecution informed the Committee that although the Directorate received money to commit 5000 cases to the High Court , but the only number of files received that year from Police after investigations and ready for committal were 1996 and as such, the DPP doesn’t determine the number of files to be received from Uganda Police.
However, Muwanga rejected her explanation firing back, “That isn’t an audit query that you did 1996 cases, we aren’t holding you for that, we are asking you, where did you put the money for the 5000 cases where you did 1996 cases? That isn’t the way you budget, you had the target of 5000 cases, you costed.”
Kainza told Parliament that the DPP doesn’t cost money for cases per file, because some of these are just for sanctioning, the officer doesn’t need any money, he sits on his desk, reads the file and then sanctions it.
“When we are budgeting, we don’t cost each case file with money. These prosecutors you see here, we pay them a salary on a monthly basis. So, for the cases they handle in terms of sanctioning, committing, we don’t give them money to handle the cases files, we pay them salaries. We don’t give them an allowance or anything when they are doing their work on the desk. We only facilitate them if they are going upcountry,” explained Kainza.
She added, “So for the committals, this was an estimate and we over targeted and this is true, we admit and going forward, we are using this financial year’s performance to determine what we do because we realize we are over targeting and yet we have no control over the files we receive as an office.”
Gorrethe Namugga, Vice Chairperson, Public Accounts Committee asked the DPP to explain the basis of planning for 5000 cases and reasons why the response being provided is different from the one submitted in the documents to Parliament.
“Maybe we need to take interest in the responses provided; they said the performance was as a result of delayed investigation as most of the cases had been referred back for further inquiries, reduced number of cases coming from Police, under staffing also affected case disposal,” remarked Namugga.
After failing to give a satisfactory response, Muwanga who doubles as Butambala County MP revealed plans by the Committee to do a calculation of the unfulfilled activities and have the officials responsible refund the money.
“By the way we are serious, we are going to calculate these monies and put it on you. For us here we do unit cost, that is how we come up with a budget, it can’t be an assumption and say this output, we take this amount of money and Parliament gives you if your committee has been doing that poor job, here, you are required to account for each unit cost. We would have expected unspent balances here, do you know how much money we are querying you about? It is Shs23Bn for partial implementation. Not exactly that amount of money, but 70%,” said Muwanga.
The probe into the DPP’s performance followed findings in the Auditor General’s report that highlighted that 10 outputs with 106 activities worth UGX23.83Bn were partially implemented, where the DPP handled fewer cases than initially planned, and in the end, the DPP sanctioned, prosecuted and committed to the High Court fewer cases despite the entity receiving sufficient funding to carry out the planned activities.
“I reviewed the annual casework performance report for FY2023/24 and noted that the ODPP did not meet any of the annual targets for the different cases that were examined,” noted Auditor General, Edward Akol.
The Auditor General also expressed concern over the many vacant positions at the ODPP upon discovering that although the staff structure provides for 1,482 staff, of these, 577 positions were filled and 905 were vacant and key among the vacant positions was the Deputy Director of Public Prosecution in charge of Prosecutions.
