The Auditor General John Muwanga in his latest report to parliament, says youth groups benefiting from the Youth Livelihood Programme (YLP) failed to comply with the repayment schedule, failing to pay back Shs1.3 billion out of the 1.6 billion disbursed to them through the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development.
“It was observed that whereas the groups funded in 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 were expected to have repaid a total amount of Shs1.8 billion (Interest inclusive) by close of the financial year 2017/2018, only Shs0.44 billion (24.9 per cent) was collected leaving a balance of Shs.1.3 billion (75.1 percent),” Mr. Muwanga says in his report.
The findings above were established as Muwanga did an audit on Shs1.6bn disbursed to youth groups in 17 Municipal Councils in the Financial Years; 2013/2014 and 2014/2015, whose recovery period of three years had expired by June 30, 2018.
Mr. Muwanga’s audit included ascertaining the following; whether all funds budgeted for YLP during the period under review were actually released and used only for the program.
Whether all funds advanced to the youth groups were repaid in accordance with the agreed repayment schedule and to establish reasons for failure or delays to repay the funds.
Also audited was whether all funds recovered during the period under review were transferred to the revolving fund account in Bank of Uganda and whether on a sample basis the funded projects exist and are operating.
He says in a report that a physical inspection on two selected projects per Municipal Council to ascertain whether youth groups benefiting from YLP were in existence and executed in accordance with the operational guidelines, established that out of the 26 inspected projects, only 6 projects were in existence while 20 projects were non-existent.
He however, says that failure to repay in a timely manner implies that other eligible groups were unable to access the funds since this is a revolving fund.
According to the Accounting Officers, delayed repayment was mainly attributed to disintegration of groups and sharing of funds by members (45 per cent), embezzlement of funds by group members (23 per cent), failure of some projects especially agriculture projects due to bad weather patterns (10 per cent) and other reasons including lack of skills, Sensitization and insecurity (22 per cent).
Failure to transfer recovered funds to the recovery account in BoU.
According to the report, a review of the bank statements of YLP collection accounts revealed that out of the collected amount of Shs0.44 billion only Shs0.4 billion was transferred to the National Revolving Fund Collection Account by the end of the financial year 2017/18 leaving a balance of Shs0.079 billion. he says this undermines the effective implementation of the program.
The accounting officers attributed this to the slow recovery rates and failure to allocate some recoveries to individual groups. I advised the Accounting Officers to follow the programme guidelines in order to achieve the project objectives.
Underfunding of the Programme.
A review of the approved budget for the YLP program revealed that whereas the 17 Municipal Councils had budgeted for a total amount of Shs1.7 billion for the financial years 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 , only Shs1.6 billion was released resulting in a shortfall of Shs17,971,000, which he says undermined the intended objective of responding to the challenge of unemployment amongst the Youths.
He says in his report that accounting officers mainly attributed this to budget cuts by the Ministry of Gender which has the final say in this programme.
