Kamuli District is a winner, the trophy being ‘Best in Forgery.’ The district has been identified as leading in the Busoga sub-region, with the highest number of civil servants holding forged academic credentials.
This revelation was made by Fredrick Komakech, the Inspectorate Officer for the Busoga sub-region, at the Inspector General of Government (IGG) regional offices in Jinja, saying, “Investigations about the use of forged academic papers by civil servants in this region revealed that Kamuli has the greatest number.”
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Mr. Komakech observed that Kamuli tops the list with eight cases investigated and cleared by the IGG, going on to clarify that each file on forgery cases typically involves multiple individuals implicated in the scandal.
“For instance, if we have eight files in Kamuli, it means we have more than eight individuals involved in the forgery scandal,” Mr. Komakech explained. “The difference lies in the number of individuals implicated per file, with Jinja having fewer people per file compared to Kamuli,” Mr. Komakech noted.
Jinja District ranks second with eight files, while Kaliro District surprisingly ranked third with 10 files, due to fewer individuals implicated in each file.
The inspectorate officer for the Busoga sub-region revealed that the education department accounted for the largest category of civil servants with fake documents, followed closely by lower administrative units.
“Teachers and newly recruited parish chiefs were found to be the most affected groups during our investigations,” Mr. Komakech stated.
Former Kamuli District Chairperson, Ms. Salamu Musumba, concurred with the IGG’s findings.
“It’s true that there’s a high prevalence of forgery among Kamuli civil servants,” Ms. Musumba said. “In fact, the IGG’s findings accurately reflect the reality on the ground.”
“In Kamuli, you’ll find people who seem uneducated but surprisingly hold academic papers with excellent grades, which is quite puzzling,” Ms. Musumba said.
She attributed the high prevalence of forgery in Kamuli to the lack of thorough background checks on job applicants.
“When I was chairperson, I would briefly look at the papers and wonder,” Ms. Musumba said seriously. “But I didn’t take action because I respected the social norms and values of the communities where they resided.”
However, Ms. Musumba stressed that this practice has led to poor service delivery and poor academic performance in schools.
Ms. Musumba emphasized that a significant number of civil servants in Kamuli resort to unethical means to secure employment, including borrowing, hiring, or using their relatives’ academic credentials.
The general secretary of the Busoga Region Secondary Schools Head Teachers Association, Mr. Sam Wotakyala, defended the destructive trend of forged appointment letters among secondary teachers, attributing it to the difficulty they face in accessing the payroll due to bureaucracy.
“Government takes too long to add these teachers to the payroll, resulting in some of them resorting to forging appointment letters to gain access,” Mr. Wotakyala explained.
Mr. Wotakyala, who also serves as the headteacher of St. Paul Mbulamuti Secondary School, urged the government to expedite the process of making teachers’ payroll accessible to prevent forgery of appointment letters.
To tackle the issue, Mr. Komakech has instructed chief administrative officers to verify the credentials of all teachers with the Education Service Commission before adding them to the payroll.
A massive scam was unearthed in Uganda’s education sector, with around 1,000 teachers in secondary and tertiary institutions receiving government salaries using forged documents, including fake appointment letters.
The scam is estimated to have cost the government over Shs7b annually. What’s even more shocking is that, according to the 2021/2022 Auditor General’s report, the government lost Shs19b due to payments made to 609 secondary teachers and tertiary employees in 129 local governments.
The Inspector General of Government (IGG) has been working to crack down on the forgery scandal, with several civil servants already dismissed from their positions.
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