The Speaker of Parliament, Anita Among has ordered for an independent probe into Shs9.6 billion spent by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) to teach Ugandans ‘how to drink coffee’.
Worth noting is that the OPM awarded the Shs9.6Bn contract to Inspire Africa (U) Ltd to carry out four activities to promote and encourage consumption of coffee countrywide.
Accordingly, of the Shs9.6bn, Shs3.8bn was spent on training youths in coffee production, Shs1.9bn on consumption of coffee and putting up coffee shops, Shs2.6bn on capacity building while Shs1.2 on administration.
However, according to the Auditor General’s report, although the contract provided for the establishment of coffee shops in; Arua, Mbale, Lira, Gulu, and Tororo, physical inspections revealed that except for Gulu, the coffee shops were either non-existent or non-operational in areas where they were supposed to be placed.
The revelation irked the Members of Parliament who ordered for investigations into the matter.
Speaker Among, said the way the money was spent was questionable, warning that if such wasteful expenditure is not punished, government may soon ask for funds to teach Ugandans ‘how to use condoms‘.
“The coffee consumption in quotes is a nurgatory expenditure, can we have an independent investigation on this matter? Let us have this matter investigated on its own, we aren’t going to wait for the Treasury Memorandum. The person responsible for it should bear the liability,” Among said.
The chairperson Public Accounts Committee, Medard Sseggona noted that the committee had made findings, that whereas the money was expended by OPM to promote the drinking of coffee by building coffee kiosks across the country, the kiosks were non-existent.
“We made specific findings by the Committee on how far the partner went in implementing this and we came up with the conclusion that they aren’t there. And we came up with a conclusion that actually it was unnecessary expenditure,” Sseggona said.
The leader of opposition, Mathias Mpuuga urged MPs to be stricter on all social action programmes, to prevent beneficiaries from settling for raw deals.
Mpuuga, further observed that the whole idea of promoting coffee is being handled at the tail end before promoting production, saying this does not make sense.
“We are promoting consumption of what isn’t available. I am a coffee farmer at the large scale & as I speak, there isn’t enough coffee to supply the market, and we should be supporting the communities to grow coffee. Those who want to consume coffee will find motivation to take the coffee, but at least, there is a general motivation of selling to get money, that we must promote,” Mpuuga observed.
However, the Third Deputy Prime Minister, Rukia Nakadama rejected the nomenclature given to the project, saying, the name that was given for drinking coffee, was for popularizing coffee intake, not to teach people how to drink coffee.
“I think it was given a wrong heading. It should be popularizing the intake of coffee.” Nakadama said.
