Parliament Calls for Forensic Audit on National Council of Sports

The Select Committee constituted to investigate the operations of the National Council of Sports (NCS) has called for a forensic audit on the sports body in Uganda.

The recommendation is contained in the report that was on Tuesday, 04 April 2023 presented by the Chairperson of the Select Committee Hon. Laura Kanushu on the floor of Parliament.

The committee recommended that the Auditor General carries out a forensic audit on NCS to establish the inconsistencies in the funds released to the sports federations in the first and second quarters of the Financial Year 2022/2023. It was observed that the sports body did not remit the approved funds to the sports federations in line with approved cash flow plan as required under Section 45 (4) of the Public Finance Management Act, 2015.

“The Committee established that most federations received less money than what had been approved and others did not receive any funding from the Council, which has, in turn, affected the implementation of their planned outputs,” Hon Kanushu said.

A case in point is Uganda Rugby Union that was reportedly supposed to receive Shs458 million in Quarter one of Financial Year 2022/2023, but only received Shs224 million from NCS on 27th July 2022, according to the committee findings.

“Whereas we requested for evidence of transfer of funds to the sports federations, including bank statements and receipts, NCS did not submit this information…,” Kanushu said.

The committee cautioned the accounting officer of NCS against overstepping his legal mandate by suffocating budgets of sports federations. “The accounting officer of NCS should always comply with the law and transfer funds to federations in accordance with the approved cash flow plans and must not at any time take on the responsibility of re-allocation of funds as this does not fall within his legal mandate,” she said.

Kanushu said that there were also allegations from some federations such as Netball, and Boxing that NCS spent funds on its behalf and required them to account for the same funds. However, she said the committee could not verify the allegations due to insufficient evidence but called for an investigation into the same.

Among other red flags raised by the committee include; the non-submission of audited accounts by the sports federations to the Council. It is said that out of the 51 registered federations, only 27 had submitted audited books of accounts by end of FY 2021/2022.

Deputy Speaker, Thomas Tayebwa deferred debate on the committee report to Wednesday, 05 April 2023.