By Jimmy Muhumuza,
Parliament.
Parliament has adopted a report from the committee of trade recommending the Appointing Authority and Parliament to whip against state minister for Trade Harriet Ntabazi over abuse of office, corruption, bribery, and peddling with Rice Agribusiness development foundation (RADFO) and fleecing billions of monies from Rice Importers and Traders.
On 5/5/2022 Rice traders’ limited petitioned parliament for interventions over the directive of state minister for Trade Harriet Ntabazi over her directives to seizure clearance of VAT-exempt Rice imports until further notice which caused trucks from Tanzania at Mutukula to unlearned.
Today, the report was presented before parliament with observations and recommendations which faulted the minister in question for abuse of office. The reports observed that the minister delegated her powers outside the law and connived with one company Rice Agribusiness development foundation and solicited billions of money worth 17.8bn from Rice Importers and growers.
While presenting the committee report during the plenary sitting, the committee chairperson, Hon. Mwine Mpaka said that Ntabazi exceeded her powers and issued orders that distorted trade orders in the rice trade.
“The minister irregularly and without lawful authority instituted RADFO as the apex body in the rice sub sector without involving the rice traders and associations. The actions of the minister are disruptive and do not encourage trade order in the rice trade,” Hon Mpaka said.
Other recommendations in the report include IGG to investigate the embattled minister Harriet Ntabazi.
“The Minister of State for Trade, Hon. Harriet Ntabazi’s actions tantamount to abuse of office, corruption, facilitating corrupt transactions with agents, bribery, influence peddling, conflict of interest which are all crimes provided for under the anti-corruption Act of 2009,” the Committee report read in part.
Mpaka, Added that RADFO has been conniving with URA officials to fleece the rice importers the Shs180,000 per ton which is exorbitant compared to the Shs40,000 per ton that they used to pay before this new directive.
“The committee recommends that civil action be instituted against RADFO with the aim of obtaining compensation amounting to Shs17.8 billion which was illegally, unlawfully, illegitimately, dishonestly, fraudulently and unpatriotically collected from the traders,” Mpaka said.
The committee also discovered that RADFO only declared Shs1 billion to the government out of the Shs17.8 billion collected.
The report has recommended for President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and Parliament to whip against State minister for Trade Harriet Ntabazi.
Members of parliament led by opposition chief whip John Baptist Nambeshe have welcomed the recommendations but doubt if the Appointing Authority will take action against Harriet Ntabazi who dismissed the committee recommendations.
Ntabazi said that in RADFO’s terms and reference, they were not supposed to collect any money from rice traders on behalf of the government.
“The decision of government to assign RADFO as an apex body was not a selective or one person’s decision. It was a collective decision by all members including the rice associations…The terms and reference of RADFO were never to collect any money from anybody and it wasn’t written in the letters that I wrote,” Ntabazi said.
Am still thinking that all these allegations might be political just.