Anti-Corruption Unit, Media to Strengthen Partnership to Fight Graft

In a bid to strategize on how best corruption can be defeated in Uganda, the State House Anti-Corruption Unit met with key media players and dialogued on various key points.

The two groups met on Tuesday at the Unit’s headquarters located in the President’s office on Parliamentary building in Kampala.

The head of Anti-corruption unit Lt.Col Edith Nakalema and her team met with senior media managers of various radios and television stations including field reporters from print and online media outlets.

As the unit marks one year, Lt. Col. Nakalema utilized the meeting to personally appreciate the media organizations who have played different roles in reporting the fight against corruption.

According to her, “The Unit has had and continues to need support of the press in all its forms to galvanize the fight against corruption and to give and maintain hope to the citizenry that this fight is on course.”

She requested the public to keep an eye on areas of public interest which the unit is going to prioritize in the next year 2020.

According to Nakalema, the unit is going to focus on local government scandals, social service cases.

Other areas will be land fraud, tax collections, ministries, departments and agencies.

Since its inception, Lt. Col. Nakalema revealed that the unit has received 5000 complaints through the various reporting channels.

“We have caused investigations into mismanagement of over Shs 140bn and a total of 104 public officers and 11 private persons have been charged before the Anti-corruption court. So far, 9 people have been convicted and barred from holding public offices for 10 years,” she said.

The public officers undergoing trial have been interdicted too.

“A total of Shs 700m has been recovered and returned to the consolidated fund. In addition, Shs 157m fraudulently obtained from “Wanaichi” by licenced labour exporting companies was recovered and returned to the aggrieved,” she added.

The army lady hosted the media fraternity on a luncheon where they exchanged many ideas in regards to fighting corruption in the country.