Public wealth misappropriated by members of the public and leaders is set to be recovered as the Ombudsman’s office and other concerned parties have started a recovery process. The misappropriation is attributed to people concealing information among other reasons fostering the illegal possession of government assets and wealth.
The 2014- 2015 report of the Ombudsman indicates that 4,031 individuals misappropriated public wealth for own interests. The wealth is comprised of forests, coffee plantations, living houses, offices and commercial buildings among others.
Talking to IGIHE, the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General, Johnston Busingye has said that a delegation led by the ombudsman office has started the process of recovering misappropriated public wealth.
“It is an activity we must do with vigilance to make a perfect audit. The exact day of completion is not indicated but there is a team delegated to follow up the cases. No law allows people to own government’s wealth .When we realize it we follow up the matter and recover the wealth,” he said.
Minister Busingye said that those who misappropriated government wealth must hand it back as soon as possible regardless of their position.
“If a leader misappropriated government’s wealth based on his position, it may be another problem. The Ombudsman office will have a particular attention to follow up such matters,” he said.
Gatera Athanase, the representative of the Ombudsman office in the delegation carrying out the investigation says various leaders misappropriated public wealth.
“The chain of people who took government’s properties includes ordinary citizens and various leaders. What we did is to make sure these properties are not sold or be presented as guarantees,” he said.
The investigation carried by the Ombudsman office in 30 districts indicated 503 ordinary citizens accepting to have taken government property and requested to hand over land titles to government or government institutions while 374 citizens extended their domain into bordering government land.
Gatera attributed such practices to some people conniving with local government officials to squander government property. “There has been carelessness,” he said.
The ombudsman office recommends leaders to make sure the government’s wealth is censures and registered, establishing a way of managing the unregistered government’s wealth and presenting bills indicating the wealth of every institution as a bid to preserve public fortune.
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