4,000 ghosts claimants exposed in war debt list

In Summary

Ghosts. Thousands of non-existing individuals found their way into the compensation list and fraudulently received cash.

Gulu. A verification exercise conducted by the Office of the Attorney General (AG) early this year has unearthed a total of 4,000 ghost claimants on the Acholi War Debt compensation list.
The findings were revealed on Monday by Mr Henry Oluka, the acting Commissioner in the AG’s Office that is in charge of compensating war debt claimants in the greater north.
Mr Oluka, while addressing leaders from Acholi sub-region in Gulu Town on Monday, said thousands of non-existing individuals found their way into the compensation list and fraudulently received cash.
He said some of the claimants on the lists are underage, with no clear proof whether their parents lost animals during the insurgencies that ravaged the sub-region.
“We discovered these anomalies during verification exercises. In some instances, a ‘ghost’ beneficiary has singly received payment on four different installments which amounts to Shs80 million,” Mr Oluka said.
He said the verification team is still working on 22,000 individual claimants in a bid to clean up the data they have received and come up with authentic claimants.
Mr Oluka added that due to the abuse of the fund, they have already sent some files to police criminal investigations department for action. “This is the time for making accountable the money government allocated for compensating war claimants, “ he said.
However, the executive chairman of the Acholi War Debt Claimants Association, Mr Noah Opwonya, dismissed the claims, saying they submitted the accountabilities of all the money through the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs.
Mr Opwonya added that all relevant government offices have been served with copies of financial transactions by the association.
The Aruu County Member of Parliament, Mr Samuel Odonga Otto, blamed the mess on politicians from the sub-region.
He said they agreed that Shs10 billion meant for compensation in Acholi sub-region was to be disbursed after this year’s general election but the NRM politicians thought that if the payments were withheld, President Museveni would lose votes in the sub- region.
Between 2006 and 2013, government advanced about Shs 7.1 billion as compensation for animals lost during the two decades of civil wars in the sub-region.

The numbers
22,000
The number of individual claimants on the Acholi War Debt compensation list.

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