The Ugandan government has ordered for a forensic audit in all its departments in efforts to stem corruption that is costing the East African country millions of U. S. dollars.

The move comes amidst increasing public anger and pressure from the country's development partners to recover billions of shillings lost in various financial scams that have engulfed the country.

The latest of such scams is the high level fraudulent financial rip-off in the Office of the country's Premier where accountants and other government officials siphoned over 18.8 million U.S. dollars meant for the northern part of the country which is recovering from a two decade long rebellion.

The scam has forced the country's development partners including Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark to suspend aid to the country until stringent measures are put in place.

The World Bank, which is one of the country's major lenders, on Nov. 14 said it was reviewing its development assistance to Uganda over increased allegations of misuse of public funds by government officials.

The country's President Yoweri Museveni while meeting donors on Monday in a bid to persuade them resume funding said that all the loop holes have been identified and the noose is being tightened to rip out all the corrupt government officials.

"We have the capacity to defeat these thieves as we defeated all the other enemies of Uganda .. The fights against these thieves are going on well. Give me your support," he told the donor agencies, which he met at State House Entebbe, 40 km south of the capital Kampala.

He said he can never practice political patronage by shielding corrupt officials. He warned the corrupt seeking political protection that they will be eliminated.

"We are going to methodically unearth all those involved. I suspended the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Public Service and I will suspend anybody else" once they are fund involved, he told the donors.

In earlier meetings with the donors, Uganda's Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi apologized for the mess promising tougher measures to root out the culprits.

One of the measures include the Auditor General taking further forensic audit on mismanagement of public funds in other relevant government institutions.

The other measure is that the government has put in place procedures in the control of donor disbursements within the central bank and Treasury whereby all flows will first be remitted to the Consolidated Fund Appropriation Account before the funds are transmitted to beneficiary accounts, instead of Suspense Accounts.

Unlike before, the government has also started freezing assets of government officials suspected of being involved in financial scandals where government has lost colossal sums of money.

In the ongoing investigations into the pension scam, police has frozen the assets of the suspects which it said were trying to dispose them off to hide their financial dealings. Endi

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