The Auditor General, John Muwanga has raised alarm on the skyrocketing accumulation of liabilities by Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) after the debt hit the ShsU760.4Bn mark.
This followed the review of the Authority’s financial statement that revealed that UNRA’s accumulated liabilities had risen to the tune of Shs760.4Bn, comprising of certified and approved liabilities worth Shs616.1Bn and unapproved certificates by management of Shs144.3Bn and UNRA’s top management attributed the accumulation of liabilities to lack of funds and delayed payments.
The Auditor General also queried UNRA’s policy of approving certificates within 60 days by a committee appointed by the Accounting Officer, where a scrutiny into the policy revealed that the approval process takes much longer and by the end of the year the unapproved certificates had accumulated to Shs144.3Bn, delays he says lead to interest payments related to non-settlement of certificates issued for work done and result into escalation of construction costs.
“Furthermore, it paints a bad picture on road contracts and some intrinsic costs may be built in the contract to cater for delays leading to high cost contracts. During the year an amount of Shs41.34Bn was paid as interest for delayed payment for various projects,” noted Muwanga.
During the interface with the auditors, Allen Kagina, Executive Director UNRA explained that the exercise for the verification and approval of works certificates is a very lengthy because of the technicalities and the amounts involved and this is worsened by the delayed release of funds which also leads to late payments hence interest penalties.
Further in the December 2022 Auditor General’s report, the audit team also raised concern about the delayed provision of access to project sites resulting in a loss of Shs5.64Bn for 6 road projects, which arose from delayed compensation of Project affected Persons (PAPs) for acquisition of land for right of way resulting in the contractors charging UNRA for time related obligations due to failure to access project site and charging UNRA for idle time.
The projects that registered delays included; Tirinyi-Pallisa-Kumi where delays led to payment of Shs4.56Bn for time related obligations, Pallisa-Kamonkoli where access delays led to payment of Shs1.08Bn for time related obligations.
Muwanga advised the Authority to ensure sites are accessible before issuing commencement orders and also in cases where the delays are as a result of incompetence of the UNRA project management team, the officials should be held responsible for delays without appropriate justification.
The Auditor General also questioned the motive behind UNRA advancing Shs2.32Bn to the contractor in payment certificates relating to materials on site for the Mpigi town roads project without any contractual basis.
UNRA is said to have informed the Auditors that the materials-on-site value was paid in split currency as per the main road contract.
However, Muwanga replied, “I indicated to the Accounting Officer that the contract signed for the works in 2019 did not have any provision for payments of materials-on-site. The main contract being referenced did not form any part of the contract documents as listed in the contract agreement. I advised the Accounting Officer to ensure that the funds are recovered from the subsequent payments.”
Parliament Committee of Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises is slated to interface with officials from UNRA on findings of the audit report before final position is taken by Parliament.
