Mbale City Council is yet to realize more than half of its estimated local revenue for the financial year 2021/2022, two months to the end of the financial year. The city council projected to collect over 3.7billlion. However, as of March 30th, 2022, Mbale City council had only collected Shillings 1.1 billion raising concern among councillors and residents.
The councillors have turned the heat on the deputy town clerk, Kenneth Khatuli Woniaye and Chief Finance Officer, Richard Mabala for the alleged disparities and shortfalls in local revenue collections. According to the councillors, the Deputy Town Clerk, Waniaye and Mabala have been at the forefront of mismanaging local revenue collection. They also accuse the duo of conniving some people to rob the city of finances meant for service delivery.
URN has learnt that Mbale City council has failed to collect over Shillings 400million from companies contracted to collect revenue from utilities. These include central investments which was contracted to collect street parking fees and had failed to remit Shillings 240 million as of June last year and Mbale Tippers, Lorry Drivers Association Limited was contracted to collect load and offloading fees and owes the council Shillings 219 million.
The outburst of the councillors stems from the clashes resulting from the procurement of contractors to collect revenue from street parking and loading and offloading. Recently, Mbale City council contracted Nalu towers and travels to collect street parking fees, which put it in direct conflict with Central Investments Limited whose contract expired last year.
Mbale City terminated the contract of Central investments citing failure to remit over Shillings 246million. Despite losing the tender, the company declined to vacate the streets and continued collecting street parking fees until Tuesday last week leading to skirmishes.
The councillors accuse Waniaye and Mabala of being behind the mess and want them held liable for the financial losses.
In their council meeting held on Thursday last week, the councillors voted to send the duo on forced leave to pave way for investigations into the management of local revenue collection. Sam Mafabi, the Mbale City Council Finance Secretary, said the deputy town clerk and the Principle Finance Officer be removed from the collection of the property rates from the Integrated Revenue Administration System (IRAS).
IRAS is a web and mobile application platform that aids municipalities and cities in the collection of local revenue from registration, assessment, billing, and payment sensitization of taxpayers among other things yet it was a council resolution to have all the utilities on IRAS. Mafabi explained that the city deputy clerk has no clear explanation of the management of utilities, which is why he has to be held accountable for causing financial loss to the council.
Ismail Mukankadi, the Mbale City Works Secretary, says that the Principal Finance Officer has severally presented to the council financial reports containing discrepancies, an indicator of the ongoing financial mismanagement.
Abdul Aziz Sharaf, the Chairperson of the General Purpose Committee of the council, said the CFO could be overwhelmed with work and needs to go on leave to rest.
Miriam Nambuya, the Speaker of Mbale City Council notes that for the last year, their local revenue performance has not been as expected, which prompted the councillors to move around the city to sensitize the community only to realize that the people are paying the revenues but the money doesn’t reach the council accounts.
Kenneth Kahatuli Woniaye, the City Deputy Clerk, said that the council is doing what it can to realize its local revenue target. He blames the low local revenue collection on political wars among the city’s political leaders.
In the financial report presented to the Council last week, the Chief Finance Officer, Richard Mabala noted that there was a positive impact on the collection of local revenue using the IRAs but hastened to note that there is a need for more enforcement to collect what has been assessed and also register new property rates.
A report by the Anent Nandudu, the Mbale Central Market Master indicates that by January this year, Mbale central market was able to contribute over Shillings 50 million. She, however, noted due to several issues, the CFO and the town clerk decided to remove the collection of market revenues from the IRAS system.
She notes while on IRAS system, they cannot easily access money for things such as utilities, which hinders service delivery to the vendors.
