The Minister of Trade, Francis Mwebesa has threatened to sue the government citing that he has spent a lot of his personal money to fuel his official car.
Mwebesa says he was disappointed to find out that a very low-ranking officer at the Ministry has been using the fuel card attached to the minister and there was no intention for this junior officer to hand it back.
"I am almost taking Government to court because I have been spending my own money yet I have heard that some people have been taking millions. I want to ask the Government to pay me this money regardless of everything," said Mwebesa.
Mwebesa and his team were appearing before Parliament's Trade Committee when he heard the revelations.
In the same committee, it was revealed that Deo Byaruhanga, a Principal Engineer at the Ministry of Trade spent Shs2m on fuel per trip, to transport files from Farmer's House in Kampala to Entebbe when the offices were being renovated.
Recently, legislators sitting on the Parliamentary Committee on Trade, Tourism and Industry were left dumbfounded by the revelation from officials of the Ministry of Trade who confirmed that a staggering Shs400m was spent in moving documents from the Ministry's office in Kampala to its stores in Entebbe.
The Ministry offices are located at Farmers House in Kampala Central Business District. However, there was a need to transfer documents to the Ministry's stores in Entebbe, just about 50kms away, all this came at a cost of Shs400m.
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The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperative Geraldine Ssali to clarify the claims that some Ministers were involved in the attempted deal to transfer the Ministry headquarters from a government building at Farmers House to a rented building at Kingdom House.
But according to Ssali, it was the State Minister for Industries David Bahati who told her that Farmer's House had been condemned hence the need to have the ministry relocated to the Kingdom Kampala building or King Ceaser Plaza.
In a communication to the media, Ssali explained that the ministry received a supplementary budget of Shs 5 billion to procure new office space for the Ministry as the current office spaces were deemed dilapidated.
The ministry had initially justified that a further Shs 3 billion would be needed for partitioning and Shs 2 billion for furniture.
She said the team weighed all options and decided to renovate the current office space at a much lower cost than incurring recurrent costs on rent annually.
"The Ministry received clearance from the Solicitor General regarding the procurement method. If the funds were not used, they had to be returned to the Treasury as required by law under non-absorption of funds," she said.
According to Ssali, the whole objective of the exercise was to save costs, considering that the government is currently undertaking a rationalisation of government agencies programme to save on costs like rent of government office space.
She refuted the allegations of fraud and diverting of resources.
