20 Mbale City Workers Ordered to Refund UGX 66 Million in Irregular Salaries

Lady Justice Naluzze Aisha Batala

The Inspectorate of Government has directed the City Town Clerk of Mbale City to recover more than UGX 66 million from 20 city officials who were irregularly overpaid salaries.

In a press statement issued on 5th March 2026, the Inspectorate said the money, amounting to UGX 66,544,418, was paid to the officials due to payroll mismanagement.

According to the statement, the directive followed investigations conducted by the IG’s Mbale Regional Office, which established that the 20 employees received irregular salary payments between Financial Year 2022/2023 and Financial Year 2024/2025.

The Inspectorate has instructed that the recovered funds be deposited into the Assets Recovery Account held at the Bank of Uganda.

Investigations further revealed that the affected officials acknowledged receiving the excess payments. During interviews, all 20 employees reportedly said the money had already been used for personal expenses and that none of it was returned to the city authorities at the time. However, they expressed willingness to refund the funds.

Mbale City’s Human Resource Officer, Mr. Abdu Higenyi, attributed the irregular payments to system migration errors. He explained that the problem began in July 2022 when the city implemented new salary scales following salary enhancements for science teachers.

According to Higenyi, the implementation of the new salary structure resulted in a mix-up that caused excess payments to some staff members.

He added that another system migration in June 2025, when the city moved from the Integrated Personnel and Payroll System (IPPS) to the Human Capital Management System (HCMS), led to the recurrence of the same payroll error.

The Inspectorate emphasized that recovery of the funds is necessary to ensure accountability in the management of public resources and warned public institutions to strengthen payroll management systems to avoid similar irregularities.