Rakai. More than 200 civil servants in Rakai District have been summoned by the Inspector General of Government (IGG) to explain how they failed to refund excess money that was erroneously wired to their bank accounts.

The staff, who include 200 teachers and 40 health workers, are said to have received salaries beyond their actual payments in the 2014/15 financial year.

They were last week interrogated by a team from the IGG’s office in Masaka led by Mr Robert Mugisha.

Ms Munira Ali, the IGG spokesperson, confirmed the ongoing investigations though she did not divulge details, saying it would jeopardise their work. “It is true we are investigating some officials in Rakai over embezzlement of funds. We shall release more details after our investigations,” Ms Munira said during a telephone interview at the weekend.

According to sources, the investigating team has so far established that the technical fraud was masterminded by some district officials, including the then chief administrative officer, human resource officer with the education and health department accountants.

“They [the district officials] are said to have deposited the money on various accounts of civil servants under the guise of paying arrears,” a source privy to the investigations said.

Although some of the implicated employees acknowledged receiving the big sums of money on their bank accounts, they disclosed to the investigating team that the district officials later told them to withdraw the excess amount and send it back to them in cash, which they did.

Mr Livingstone Ssamula, a teacher at Kyabihwa Primary School in Kakuuto Sub-county, said he was given over Shs5 million in three instalments in 2014 beyond his salary. A primary teacher earns a monthly salary of Shs480,000.

“But I was told to refund the money, which I did without any hesitation though I got no receipt in return,” he said.

Mr Ssamula, however, said he was surprised that Ms Rose Yawe, the current head of the human resource department, ordered him to recover the money yet he had already returned it. “Currently, my account has a recovery code command, where my little monthly salary is deducted to recover money, which I already refunded in cash,” Mr Ssamula said.

This reporter could not get some of the officials civil servants said to have received the money in cash.

However, Mr Aaron Kayinga, the then district human resource officer, told Daily Monitor at the weekend that the allegations levelled against his colleagues are engineered by their enemies who want them sacked.

“Those allegations are baseless and unfounded. The Auditor General managed to get those people last year and they were ordered to refund the money; I now wonder why people are now bringing back the same issue,” Mr Kayinga said.

In connection to the matter, a former teacher at Kalisizo Muslim Primary School, Ms Justine Chemtai, abandoned her duty station after she was intimidated as she tried to retrieve her salary that she had failed to get for over nine years.

Ms Chemtai said realised later that there was an impersonator who was pocketing her salary with the help of some district officials.

Despite her efforts to report to authorities, she was not helped and later decided to quit as intimidation from some district officials increased.

Two years ago, the IGG’s office also investigated 200 teachers who had been recruited under controversial circumstances.

The irregular recruitment was unearthed by the office of the IGG, which immediately disbanded the district service commission. According to the IGG report released in October 2016, 709 primary school teachers (Grade III) were short listed out of 724 that applied for the advertised 200 vacancies.

The IGG’s report further indicates that while the job advert indicated that all applicants had to be qualified Grade III teachers fully registered by the ministry of Education, 35 of those recruited did not meet that requirement. Some of them merely claimed to have registration numbers without registration certificates.

According to sources, the investigating team has so far established that the technical fraud was masterminded by some district officials, including the then chief administrative officer, human resource officer with the education and health department accountants. Rakai District employs 2,700 civil servants, of which 1,350 are teachers and 900 health workers.