Kitgum Municipal Authorities Accused of Diverting UGX44M USE Grant

Kitgum Municipal authorities are on the spot for allegedly diverting Shillings 44.24 meant for Kitgum Town College, a private secondary school implementing Universal Secondary Education-USE.

The money was disbursed to the municipality in the 2018-2019 financial year under the School Capitation Grant. Kitgum Town College is one of the private schools in the municipality implementing USE.  

Michael Ocan, the Kitgum Town College Head Teacher, says they were meant to receive the money in the fourth quarter of the 2018-2019 financial year. Documents seen by URN for the fourth quarter expenditure for the capitation grants for UPE, USE and Tertiary releases for intuitions 2018/2019 financial year show that government released Shillings 99,393,180 million to Kitgum Town College.

Ocan says when they tried to follow up on the money through the office of the Town Clerk, they were told that there was an error in allocating the money and it would be redirected into the school account.  He however, says to date they haven’t received the money.

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Ocan says the school management had planned to use the money to procure 15 computers and set up an ICT laboratory. He notes that their failure to receive the money has affected the teaching of Information, Communication and Technology studies at the school.

  He says they are now stranded, since each student had paid Shillings 20,000 for computer lessons. Last week, students at the school mainly senior four candidates staged a violent strike protesting among other reasons failure to attend computer lessons despite paying for it and late access to the mock Examination timetable.

Patrick Ocan Ocitti, the acting Kitgum Town Clerk denies any foul play. He says they allocated only Shillings 56.9 million out of the Shillings 99.3 million to Kitgum Town College because the school authorities had exaggerated enrollment.  

According to Ocitti, they had started paying the school in the first quarter but they were tipped off by concerned school officials about the exaggerated enrollment, which forced them to do assessment and adjusted the figures.

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He says the remaining money was disbursed to four other secondary schools that has had unquestionable enrollment but were receiving less Capitation Grants.  They are Kitgum Alliance College, Kitgum Integrated College, Kitgum Vision College and St Bakhita Girls Secondary School.

He says they have since recommended to the Education and Sports Ministry to stop funding schools that don’t deserve the capitation grant such as Kitgum Oxford College.

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The State House Anti-Corruption Unit is currently investigating complaints by Kitgum College whose officials accuse the Municipal authorities of wrongly withholding their money.

Capitation Grants are computed based on enrollment where government pays Shillings 47,000 for each student. 

Last year, Government begun phasing out USE support in 792 private schools, saying it will use the money to fund construction of its own schools and improve the existing ones.