Members of Parliament have questioned Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) management over inconsistencies in the employee and payroll details.

This was during the Authority’s interaction with the Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities, and State Enterprises (COSASE) chaired by Medard Lubega Ssegona (Busiro East, NUP).

The revelations came from the Auditor General’s report on the Authority's financial statements for the year ended June 30, 2024.,

Key among the findings was the discovery of discrepancies in employee records, including instances of 52 partially verified temporary workers and 155 partially verified permanent staff.

The Auditor General’s report indicates that out of the 1,442 employees on the entity’s main payroll, a total of 1283 (88.97%) employees were fully verified, while 155 (10.74%) were partially verified.

Additionally, the report shows that out of 193 temporary staff on UNRA’s February 2023 salary payroll, a total of 134 (69.4%) were fully verified, while 52 (26.94) were partially verified.

The legislators also found that a total of 69 employees on the main payroll and one recruited on a temporary basis had inconsistencies in their names and National Identification Numbers.

According to the AG’s report, the entity’s financial statements also indicate that there was an under-remittance of sh51.7m of local service tax. In addition, out of the 1480 approved positions in the authority, a total of 1443 positions were filled leaving a gap of 37 vacant positions.

The members of Parliament were perturbed that UNRA does not submit wage estimates and recruitment plans to the finance ministry.

They also questioned why UNURA had long outstanding payables, some of which had been outstanding for more than 2 years.

The authority reported over sh621.496b as payable as of June 30, 2023, in their statement of financial position.

“I aged the disclosed payables and established that three payables worth over sh112m had been outstanding for more than two years, 50 payables worth over sh42b had been outstanding for more than one year, and 768 payables worth over sh579.362b had been outstanding for more than one year,” the report said. 

According to the Auditor General, long outstanding payments could be an indication of poor budgeting and management faces risks of litigation and payment of penalties and interests for delayed payments.

Brenda Kyasiimire, the acting Director Human Resources at UNRA, explained that the errors were due to data captured in names and NINs, some of which she said were due to system error at immigration of date from Excel to Human Capital Management Software (HCM). Other errors, she said were due to human errors of data entry.

Regarding staff with inconsistent data, Kyasiimire said the staff have since rectified and promised to furnish the committee with evidence.

On the other hand, Allen Kagina, the entity’s executive director, while commenting on the audit queries regarding outstanding payables, explained that during the years, UNRA’s budget was cut from sh3.003t to sh2.654t, creating a gap of sh349b on ongoing projects.

“Similarly, UNRA received sh7b to pay for its domestic arrears of sh471b. This could not absorb the debt for projects that had exited the government’s project implementation plan (PIP),” she explained.

Compensation of project-affected persons

A review of the Authority’s land acquisition status as of June 30, 2023, revealed key issues relating to compensation of Project Affected Persons (PAPs) from the road projects under implementation by UNRA.

According to the AG’s report, the authority obtained a total of 28,960.87 acres of land from 172,608 PAPs at a total of over sh3.263tn. However, only 139,933 PAPs were paid a total of over sh2.490tn, for 22,383.03 acres of land.

This implies that over sh773.7b remained outstanding. It was also noted that the original valuation reports for Kigumba-Bulima Road and Acholibur-Musingo Road became outdated, and the valuation exercise repeated rendering funds spent on the original valuation wasted.

This, according to AG, was due to the fact that payment for PAPs was delayed. It was noted that no PAPs were paid for the Kinja-Mbulamuti, Kyenjojo-Rwamwanja and Tororo-Busia Road projects.

For Kawuku-Bwerenga road (6.6km) and Namugonde-Bugiri (fuel tank reservoir 1.6km), 187 out of 548 PAPs had been summited to the accounts department for payment. Out of these, only 161 PAPs had been paid.

The accounting officer explained that during feasibility studies, the claimants had not provided all the requisite documents, while some rejected awards, or were absent while for other PAPs, their payments delayed due to inadequate release of funds.