Mpigi, Uganda – Mpigi District Acting Engineer Kyambadde Sam has been remanded to prison over allegations of stealing fuel meant for road maintenance.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!He was arraigned before the Mpigi Chief Magistrate’s Court on charges of theft and remanded until August 5, 2025, pending a bail hearing.
Kyambadde now joins his co-accused, Sitakange Charles, in a case involving the embezzlement of 21,739 liters of fuel, valued at UGX 242,022,500.
The stolen fuel was part of the UGX 1 billion Road Maintenance Grant allocated to Mpigi District for the 2023–2024 financial year.
Investigations revealed that the two engineers orchestrated the theft by inflating fuel requisitions for various road projects before colluding with fuel station managers to bypass control measures and siphon off the excess fuel.
To conceal their fraudulent activities, they used registration numbers of grounded and non-operational vehicles to account for the stolen fuel.
For instance, records show that a tipper truck with registration number LG 0002-082, which had been out of service since 2022, was fraudulently listed as having consumed fuel worth UGX 18.5 million.
Additionally, the engineers used vehicle registration numbers from other departments and even non-district vehicles that were never involved in road works to create false records, leading to a loss of UGX 90 million in stolen fuel.
Further scrutiny exposed another layer of fraud, with investigators discovering that the Kyansoozi-Kampiringisa-Muyiira Road, a project budgeted at UGX 97 million, was never worked on despite official reports claiming its completion. The allocated funds were instead diverted and stolen.
This case mirrors a recent investigation in Busia District, where municipal officials were charged last month for similar abuses involving fuel funds under the same UGX 1 billion Road Maintenance Grant.
The case highlights ongoing challenges in ensuring accountability for public funds and underscores the government’s renewed efforts to crack down on corruption within local government projects.
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