Cleric: It is difficult to sack corrupt officials from government

Year in year out, Uganda renews vows against corruption and new strategies are always put in place to end the vice.

Yet many government officials continue to be implicated in corruption scandals and little or nothing is done to bring the culprits involved to book.

Rev Canon Aaron Mwesigye, director Ethics -Religious Affairs said that the major challenge in the fight against  corruption is eliminating corrupt government officials from their positions.

"It is very difficult to remove a corrupt public servant from office very hard," Rev. Canon Mwesigye said.

This was during the Uganda Integrity Awards organised by Action Aid Uganda in partnership with ministry of Ethics and Integrity, DGF and several CSO's on Friday.

The reverend urged the ministry of Public Service to put a mechanism in place to lay off the corrupt officials and be denied access to public offices and salary especially when cases are in courts of law .

"Once they stay in office, they can use the income earned to bribe other officials including the judiciary to rule in their favour", Rev. Canon Mwesigye said.

Mwesigye said the appointment process for civil servants is riddled with corruption.

According to the 2017 bi-annual Inspectorate of Government Performance report submitted to parliament in January this year, public officials ranked highest on the complaints list on corruption with 330 cases (21%) registered during the survey.

During the celebrations to mark 25 years of Transparency International at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala last Tuesday, Museveni lashed out at the civil servants for letting  him down in the fight against corruption.

“My calculation was that these people (sub county chiefs and LC5 chairmen) would represent the interests of people. I thought they would stand with the people against the corrupt civil servants but they let me down,” Museveni said.