A High court judge in Kampala has ordered all Members of Parliament who pocketed Uganda Shillings 20 million each (about US$53,000) for coronavirus activities to return it to public coffers.
Justice Michael Elubu issued the orders Wednesday in his ruling on an application filed by the Ntungamo Municipality Member of Parliament, Gerald Karuhanga contesting the manner, in which parliament allocated the said money.
Justice Elubu issued the orders after the Parliamentary Commission, which is in charge of the parliamentary business through its lawyers led by Sitinah Cherotich, agreed with Karuhanga that the money is returned to the Parliamentary Commission, District or coronavirus National Task Force.
Karuhanga through his lawyer, David Mpanga proposed that legislators, who do not represent any District, return the money to either the Parliamentary Commission or National Task Force, which will then disburse it to Coronavirus District Task Forces.
Court also heard that an interim order issued on April 21st temporarily blocking the disbursement of the money to the legislators was overtaken by events since it had already been deposited to the inpidual accounts of the legislators by April 17th, 2020.
Mpanga noted that as long as the money first goes into public control, the merits of the main suit challenging the procedure leading to its allocation would be dealt with at a later stage.
Shortly after the court ruling, Karuhanga told Journalists that he had got some relief because the money will now return in public control.
Background
Karuhanga ran to court last week accusing Parliament of breaching its rules of procedure when it included the money in question into the report of the Budget Committee without the Consent of the Committee members.
The Shillings 10 billion (approximately US$ 2,631,720 million) is part of the Shillings 304 billion Supplementary Budget that was approved by parliament on April 4th, 2020 to facilitate the coronavirus response.
Karuhanga alleged that Parliament deducted the Shillings 10 billion from the Health and Security budgets to distribute it among legislators to purportedly carryout Covid-19 sensitization activities in disregard of the procedure.
Each MP pocketed Shillings 20 million (about US$53,000) to purportedly conduct coronavirus sensitization activities.
However, in his application, Karuhanga argued that citizens were most likely to suffer from irreparable damage if the legislators were not directed to return the monies to public coffers for proper usage. Some legislators, mostly opposition members, had already indicated their decision to return the money once it hits their accounts.
On Tuesday, the Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, said they would forward the returned money to districts where the affected legislators hail from.
On Tuesday night, President, Yoweri Museveni blasted the legislators for allocating themselves the money and described their act as morally reprehensible. Museveni said the MPs had entered a trap and the only way to get out of it was not to spend the money.
Contributed by Ahmed Wetaka, Kampala-Uganda
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