Civil Society Organisations have called upon the government to increase funding to the anti-corruption agencies.
Cissy Kagaba, the executive director Anti-Corruption Coalition Uganda –ACCU, Xavier Ejoyi, the country director Action Aid International Uganda and Peter Wandera, the executive director Transparency International Uganda, said there should be enhanced budget and funding to institution agencies or institutions fighting graft if the vice is to be minimized in the country.
“Enhance the budgets and funding of the Inspectorate of Government [IG], Anti-Corruption Department of the DPP and other agencies to enable them to effectively investigate corruption and other related offences,” Kagaba said.
ACCU with support from Democratic Governance Facility –DGF set out to assess the status and level of implementation of the Anti-Corruption Act, 2009 (as amended) with an objective to verify the claim that non- implementation of the anti-corruption laws was partly responsible for the widespread corruption problem in Uganda.
“Beyond the current understanding, the IG and DPP should urgently formulate and agree on a clear collaboration policy to guide their interventions and avoid unnecessary conflict and overlaps in the exercise of the shared mandate,” Ejoyi said.
Wandera added that current laws related to fighting corruption in the country lack a comprehensive witness protection mechanism and some offences such as abuse of office and causing financial loss are vaguely defined.
This, according to Wandera, lack of robust witness protection mechanism, has seen corruption cases becoming difficult to prove and the corrupt have been able to walk away scot-free which contravenes the objectives of the anti-corruption laws.
“Vesting the mandate to investigate and prosecute corruption in both the IG and the DPP also created unnecessary overlaps which increased the risk of duplication and likely wastage of resources in the absence of a clear coordination mechanisms,” Wandera said.
CSOs want government to reinstate requirements for leaders to declare wealth held and owned by their spouses and children under the Leadership Code Act, 2002 so as to make it easy to trace and recover assets obtained using proceeds of corruption.
Also, adopting non-conviction based asset recovery regime has been recommended by Wandera, Kagaba and Ejoyi. The argue that conviction based asset recovery imposes an unrealistic and unreasonably high degree of proof on the prosecution and makes it difficult to recover property obtained using proceeds of corruption.