The Kingdom of the Netherlands has withdrawn $4.4 million in budgetary support to the Uganda’s Justice, Law and Order (JLO) sector over what it has called the failure to adequately tackle corruption.

In the coming weeks, the Netherlands Government will also review and discuss the different modalities for other areas it provides budgetary support to.

The Justice sector was to receive $11 million from the Netherlands Government as budgetary support. Sometime late last year, Uganda received an instalment of $6.6 million and was expecting to receive the remainder this year.

Uganda received the news in a letter to the secretary to the Treasury, Mr Chris Kassami, from the Netherlands ambassador, Mr Jeroen Verheul.

In the letter dated February 17, just hours to the presidential and parliamentary elections, Mr Verheul said the decision was reached on the basis of the government’s own assessment, especially on the mismanagement of the money meant for Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting ( Chogm) in 2007.

Important areas

“I regret to inform you that given the conclusion of the recent JAF 2 assessment, the Netherlands will not be able to disburse the second tranche,” Mr Verheul wrote.

“This assessment concludes that the precondition on corruption has not been met for the second year in a row,” the ambassador wrote.

“We concluded that the government of Uganda did not meet its commitments in a number of important areas, taking administrative sanctions against the responsible officials, prosecution of high level cases of corruption/misappropriation and recovery of misappropriated funds,” the letter reads on.

Unconfirmed reports indicate that British organisation, the Department for International Development (DFID) was also in the process of suspending close to $8.1 million over Kampala's reluctance to prosecute those accused in the Chogm scandal. The European Union is also withholding $4.2 million in Aid over Chogm.

The World Bank has also cut approximately $40 million and will only give government $100 million instead of $140 million for the same reasons.