Despite an increase in Uganda’s resource envelope as reflected in the National Budget from 7 trillion shillings in 2008 to 28 trillion in 2017, people’s living standards seem not to change. This was blamed on resource mismanagement when it came to expenditure especially at Local Government levels. According to Gilbert Sendugwa the Head of Secretariat at Africa Freedom of Information Center, locals had not been empowered to hold their leaders accountable. “Ordinary people for whom public investment is intended to benefit do not receive information about what is intended to be done where, when and how? And this is a big problem. The second aspect is that people have not been given the power to question those who are supposed to serve them. And therefore you have more of upward accountability and less of downward accountability of the people. So I think it is a time that this relationship is reversed so that people have power to influence what needs to be done and question where things seem not be going right.” Said, Gilbert Sendugwa – Head of Secretariat, AFIC.

Experts said lack of access to authentic information had its impact on accountability. Billions of shillings were allocated to different sectors to offer services like roads and health facilities but in most cases, it was not accounted for thus undermining the value for money and lack of citizen confidence in the government. “The second aspect is the resignation of the population that people may not see the reason why they should take action or report when things are going bad. You need really the population to be on board, you cannot afford to serve a population that cannot trust you. That when you are addressing them, they don’t believe what you are about to tell them. Now that you are there to fight corruption but then nobody reports to you that they don’t trust you.”

Sendugwa believed the time was now to empower citizens and institution setups to enforce accountability at all levels. “How can you check, how can you oversee that something goes well if you don’t have information about it. So we believe that if these accountability measures; the Health Unit Management Committees, the School Management Committees, the various Committees at different levels of the government starting from lower going up if they are really empowered and capacitated they can make a huge difference. Again as you can see access to information is vital for them to execute this work.”
Without these efforts to minimize the risk of undermining the value of money in public expenditure, Sendugwa said achieving the set objectives underpinned by the National Development Plan might be a nightmare.