According to information provided by Robinah Nabwire, the Chief Finance Officer for the Mukono district, a total of 16 billion shillings was returned to the Consolidated Fund at the end of the 2021/2022 Financial Year without having been spent.
According to Nabwire, they were given a total of 29 billion shillings to facilitate the operations in the area; however, they were only able to spend 13 billion shillings on these programs.
“We received 29 billion shillings to help us run the district activities like paying salaries, gratuity, pension, and recruitment among other things; however, we only spent 13 billion shillings and the rest was returned as we failed to make recruitments,” she stated. “We spent the money on things like paying salaries, gratuity, pension, and recruitment among other things.”
Before the beginning of each new fiscal year, the Public Finance Management Act of 2015 requires that any money that has been budgeted but not spent must be returned to the Consolidated Fund by the end of June. This occurs just before the beginning of each new fiscal year.
The officer in charge of finances observes that given the fact that the money was not used, it was preferable to return it rather than risk having it stolen and then failing to account for it.
She indicated to the councilors and other stakeholders who were present at the budget conference for FY 2023/24 held at the Mukono district headquarters that despite all of that, the district fared well overall in FY 2021/2022, with an approximate score of 83.6%.
According to Nabwire, who is delving into the revenue performance, they had a target of collecting 3.2 billion at the conclusion of the fiscal year, but they only managed to collect 1.9 billion instead, which she attributed to the negative mindset of taxpayers. According to Nabwire, their goal was to collect $3.2 billion by the end of the fiscal year.
She claims that while they were in the process of collecting taxes, they were able to realize that many people had a bad attitude regarding the payment of taxes.
She goes on to say that other difficulties they encountered during the fiscal year included cuts to the budget, particularly transfers from other governments and external funding, which prevented them from carrying out the activities they had planned, as well as unreliable power from Umeme, which has led to an increase in the cost of running the district generator by requiring it to use more expensive fuel.
After that, Nabwire requested that the councilors establish measures so that they could create alternative channels through which they could produce more cash, which they could then employ to effectively deliver services to the district.
She says that “The local government act cap 243, empowers local councils to levy and collect taxes from various revenue sourced,” and that as a result, “the district has an opportunity of widening the revenue sources by identifying other possible revenue bases to increase the local revenue collected.” This is so because local councils have the authority to charge and collect taxes from a variety of sources under the local government act chapter 243.
On the other hand, according to the Deputy RDC of Mukono, Henry Kitambula, the sources that they have are sufficient to create the revenues that they seek to enable them to operate the activities that take place in the district. Instead, he suggested that they should be open and honest about all that they were doing.
Reverend Peter Bakaluba, who serves as the Chairperson of the Mukono district, blamed the lack of unity among the district leaders for the subpar quality of the services that are provided in the area.
“The district’s officials frequently find themselves on opposite sides of contentious debates. Some of these have tried to involve us in their conflicts with other people, which most of the time we are unaware of; this has resulted in the delivery of subpar services to our communities “he explains.
After that, he exhorted the councilors to put their party affiliations to the side and go to work on the issues that their constituents had elected them to address.
The councilors, led by Betty Naikoba, a councilor representing Ntunda- Kasawo, bemoaned the small amount of ex gratia they receive once the floor was opened for discussion.
“We do a lot of work but receive little pay for our efforts, and we want that the money is increased for this financial year as well,” she stated. “We are asking that the money be increased because we do a lot of work but receive little pay.”
According to James Nkata, who serves as the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for Mukono, anybody or whatever they want to include in their budget drafts, the conference is the ideal occasion to do so.
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