Officials from the office of the Inspectorate of Government have arrested James Luyimba the Butebo District Chief Administrative Officer and Doreen Tusiime the Rubirizi Principal Human Resource Office on cases of abuse of office, embezzling funds, and causing financial loss to the government.
A team of detectives picked Luyimba from his work station in Butebo District while Tusiime was picked from Rubirizi district.
Luyimbazi was the Chief Administrative officer Rubirizi district between 2019 and 2020, when he allegedly connived with Tusiime the Principal human resource officer in Charge of salaries and pensions to defraud the government.
According to Fredrick Okech the Mbarara regional Inspector, they received a complaint from a whistleblower who had retired from civil service and was waiting for his gratuity of 28 million shillings.
The whistleblower reported that the principal Human Resource Officer (Tusiime) had asked him to cooperate and allow her to deposit 40 million shillings instead of 28 million shillings then withdraw 12 million shillings and give it to her.
However, this sparked an investigation into the Rubirizi district payroll where they discovered that 78 newly recruited primary school teachers had received money above their salary scale.
Okech further reveals that during their investigations, they discovered that out of the 78 teachers that received the excess money, 23 returned 26 million shillings to her through mobile money while others returned 73 million to her in cash.
This he says, is what the teachers openly told the investigators.
Meanwhile, Tusiime is also accused of including her sister Mercy Mpiirwe on the government payroll as a secondary school teacher at St. Michael High School and paying 15 million shillings for one year which was well known to the accounting officer Luyimbazi.
The detectives also arrested Mpiirwe and the group will appear before the Anti-Corruption court in Kampala to answer to charges of abuse of office, embezzling funds, and causing financial loss to the government.