MPs on Public Accounts Committee have expressed concern over huge funds deposited on personal accounts that cannot be accounted for by the local government finance commission officials.
While Meeting officials from the Local Government Finance Commission, MPs on the committee chaired by Jinja municipality east said that depositing huge funds on personal accounts exposes government monies to risk of loss, given that the commission does not have any control over such funds on individual accounts.
This was after the Commission Secretary Lawrence Banyoya failed to account for over 500 million shillings that was deposited to individuals’ accounts to carry out the commission’s activities.
The documents tabled before the committee show that the commission advanced to one of its officials Bernard Ogwang with 60 million shillings but to date no accountability has been given.
Banyoya told the MPs that before the officer could account, he suffered a stroke that he cannot speak and write.
Banyoya though said some of the funds have already been accounted for, he failed to table documents to prove the accountabilities.
MPs like Jacob Opolot, Emmanuel Dombo ,Jessica Ababiku Paul Mwiru, Tim Lwanga and Kabakumba Masiko also questioned him over 224 million shillings that was diverted to pay the staff’s gratuity from commission’s allowance budget without authority.

Mps noted that the commission further 54 million shillings was paid to pre-qualified garages to repair its vehicles without inspection by the engineers in the ministry of works as required by law.
Mps said this could have been away of inflating the cost since the spare parts removed from these vehicles to put new one were not taken to government stores
MPS said that this practice undermines the importance of the budgeting process and leads to misleading reporting.

However Banyoya attributed the diversion to shortfalls in the allocations for statutory obligations. He said despite several reminders to the ministry of Finance, no authority was given.
The Auditor General’s report of 2012/13 indicate that the payments were not backed by documents like requisitions, acknowledgement of receipts, receipts for purchase and Performa invoices from service providers which made the Committee members to question the expenditure.
MP Paul Mwiru said that the accounting officer of the local government finance commission Lawrence Banyoya looks to be incompetent for this job and advised him to request his boss to relive him the duties in this commission.