KAMPALA (Reuters) - A Ugandan government drive to stamp out payment of bogus salaries to non-existent employees has saved the impoverished east African country $1 million per month, a report by the Auditor General says.

The annual report, seen by Reuters on Tuesday, was compiled following accusations by legislators that salaries for "ghost employees" were actually being pocketed by corrupt officials.

The auditor said that about $1 million had been shelled out each month to government ministries, hospitals, schools and universities to pay salaries of staff not working at them.

These were finally deleted in March 2006, it said.

"The 26,473 invalid records comprised delayed transfers, retired, absconded, died, resigned, left," the 486-page report said, adding that the missing money had not been accounted for.

President Yoweri Museveni has talked tough on corruption in Uganda, which receives nearly half its funding from foreign donors. But he has been criticised for what diplomats say are failures to punish wrongdoing by his closest allies and family.

In May, former health minister and close Museveni ally Jim Muhwezi was charged with stealing nearly $2 million of donor cash earmarked for children's vaccines.

In the early 2000s, some top Ugandan army officers were implicated in a "ghost soldiers" scandal in which salaries were drawn for dead or retired soldiers then allegedly stolen.