By Editorial,
Tororo District local government has failed to pass the 2024/25 financial year budget after it emerged that the Standard Gauge Railway compensation fund had been diverted to amenities for leaders.
What began as a normal council sitting to pass both the supplementary and 2024/25 financial year budget at Tororo district council chambers turned chaotic after councilors noticed misappropriation of funds meant for the construction of staff quarters at Tororo Hospital.
According to the local leaders, the district hospital recently received a compensation of over 3.6 billion shillings after getting affected by SGR towards the construction of staff quarters but to their dismay, the district councilors realized that part of the monies were instead allocated to individual offices, including that of the district chairperson, Chief Administrative Officer and the Speaker, to enable them purchase new vehicles.
According to records, over 200 million shillings was put towards purchasing two double cabin vehicles, 100 million shillings put towards purchase of furniture in speaker’s office, among others
The councilors, who stormed out of the meeting prematurely yesterday, further revealed that what annoyed them most was to find out that even the little they had allocated to facilitate their monitoring was allegedly scrapped from the budget. END