THREE ministers who were scheduled to appear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) probing the Commonwealth summit expenditures this week have written to the committee saying they are busy.
The committee had invited the ministers to clarify issues regarding the country’s hosting of the summit.
The committee chairman, Nandala Mafabi, named the ministers as agriculture minister Hope Mwesigye who has written to PAC to reschedule her appointment and foreign affairs minister Sam Kutesa who has also asked for more time.
State minister for tourism Serapio Rukundo who was also supposed to face the committee is reportedly in Germany.
Rukundo was to explain queries on the hotels for the summit. Kutesa is needed to explain the issues regarding the cars hired for the summit.
Mwesigye was scheduled to explain the city’s beatification process while still minister of local government.
Addressing journalists, Mafabi said the committee members had unanimously agreed to ask Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi to stop the ministers’ travels until the funds allocated to their dockets were accounted for.
The committee members said the ministers’ excuses will not be accepted “because they were derailing the committee’s work”.
MP Theodore Ssekikubo proposed that the ministers’ passports be confiscated to avoid “escaping.”
“As PAC, we shall not tolerate empty excuses by ministers who are trying to run away without accounting for the taxpayers’ money. They were given the money, used it and should therefore account for it,” he said.
The members also rejected a request by the Vice president, Gilbert Bukenya, to meet the ministers as a cabinet sub-committee rather than individuals.
“The cabinet sub-committee made collectively made decisions that guided the daily implementation of the activities by the Task Force. It’s therefore my view that the sub-committee of CHOGM meet your committee as a whole rather than individually meeting with the ministers,” Bukenya wrote.
Bukenya also expressed disappointment in the way the committee was handling permanent secretaries and other senior government officials.
“The powers of the committee are to summon people, demand documents and then give its report to the plenary where definitive action would be decided,” he said.
Mafabi and Tom Kazibwe noted that the constitution demands accountability from individuals and not the ministers as a group.
“We insist that each minister should account for the funds personally and then we will later meet them as a group.
On the issue of harassing permanent secretaries, since when did the executive direct operations of the third arm of government?” Kazibwe asked.
The committee had early this week summoned Bukenya and eight other ministers.
