Uganda’s junior minister for investment and privatization, Evelyn Anite, says her heart bleeds due to her realization that corrupt officials or thieves in the Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) are being protected by the powerful.
An agency mandated with promoting investment opportunities in Uganda, UIA has been on the spot over bribery, with officials accused of demanding bribes from investors. This year, it emerged that several UIA officials had been paid millions for work on an industrial park on top of their salaries.
Minister Anite says that although she is supposed to supervise UIA, the corruption at the agency had escalated so much that she had become helpless. She has now resorted to lamenting about her helplessness.
The minister in charge of investment also claims that the evidently corrupt officials at the investment authority were being very well protected, probably, by those who matter in the country instead of being arrested, prosecuted and fired for their wrongdoing.
She said she has been vocal in exposing corruption at UIA and could not do anything much when the people who should be in the coolers enjoy protection that shields them from prosecution.
“Everyone in this country has seen me talking about corruption in the Uganda Investment Authority (UIA). There is nobody who doesn’t know that there is corruption there,” she said in Parliament.
“Even me as the minister… My heart is bleeding that the corrupt are getting protected. They are corrupt, they have to be behind bars like yesterday but they are protected.”
Although Minister Anite had ordered UIA officials to cough the millions they awarded themselves, some refused. One of these officials even reported her to the president and she said she forgave him. (See Details Here and There).
It is not only Minister Anite’s heart which is bleeding. Even internal affairs minister Kahinda Otafiire said his heart was bleeding over the salaries and living conditions of police officers. Police officers are among the least paid government employees. Although government has started increasing salaries of police, UPDF and prisons officers, their salaries remain way lower, compared to Uganda’s 25 most highly paid government employees. (Read Stories Here, There and Over There).
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