Leaders in Oyam district are in panic mode after the Minister for Presidency Esther Mbayo declined to commission a school building that was constructed at Achaba Technical School over shoddy work, promising to deal with the perpetrators.
The incident happened on Wednesday when Mbayo was invited by the district authorities to commission the building housing a multi-purpose hall, offices and school library which was constructed through a pledge by President Yoweri Museveni.
Upon inspecting the building, the Minister found that the work was incomplete and poorly done, the floor and some walls had cracks, the ceiling had not been fixed and all the six toilets are incomplete.
This left Mbayo disappointed, only for her to learn later that Multi-line Construction Uganda Limited, a Kampala-based construction firm that was sourced by the Ministry of Education and Sports had received all the money despite the poor work.
She wondered how and why the engineer who monitored and supervised the work would give the contractor the certificate for completion of the work, blaming the district engineer and the school management Board for failing to supervise the work.
Mbayo promised to appoint a committee of inquiry to investigate the manner in which the contractor was sourced and promised not to exonerate those implicated.
She suspects connivance by the members of the Board, the District Engineers, the school head teacher, engineers from the ministry of education and the contractor to swindle the money and that they must answer
However, Julius Olupot, the Oyam District Engineer explained that the work was directly supervised by the engineers from the Ministry of Education and Sports who he identified as Emmanuel Okello and Milly Okot.
The minister was on Wednesday in a fact finding visit of government initiated programs in Oyam district.
