President Yoweri Museveni’s “Kisanja Hakuna Mchezo” may have a lot of misses so far, but the ‘old man with a hat’ seems to be getting serious about reducing or even ending corruption in Uganda.
The term “Kisanja Hakuna Mchezo” can be translated to mean ‘no jokes/games this term’.
During campaigns in the run up to the 2016 elections in which Museveni was re-election, the President said this term will be different from the previous ones, warning government officials against complacency and corruption.
To address the corruption challenge, Museveni has told political leaders as well as technical officers that they will be individually responsible for the wrong decisions they make especially those to with government resources.
Sources indicate that at a cabinet meeting in Entebbe on February 05, 2018, it was agreed that “punitive action would be taken against political leaders who willfully take decisions that are not in the best interest of the country and that they would be tasked to refund the monies spend in addressing the problems that they create.”
This is because some political and technical officers have been taking decisions that affect the county after they have been bribed.
Following the said cabinet meeting, Permanent Secretaries have written to various departments in the ministries they head briefing them about the new plan.
In a leaked internal memo dated February 18, 2018 obtained by Business Focus, Pius Wakabi Kasajja, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries tells all heads of departments about cabinet decision.
“…the respective Technical Officers will be equally held responsible for any misleading technical guidance to the political leadership,” Wakabi writes, asking them to inform their juniors about the same.
It should be noted that Uganda has had many bad deals that are costly to the country due to poor decisions taken by both political and technical officers.
It should be noted that Uganda ranks high among the most corrupt countries in the world.
Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International Wednesday published its latest global corruption perceptions index in which Uganda ranked high.
The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and business people, uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
Uganda maintained the same position in the international corruption rankings. Last year, the country was at position 151, the same this year, scoring 26 percent.
