By Our Reporter
NATIONAL
Two officials of Uganda Railways Cooperation have been charged at the Anti – Corruption Court, Kololo, Kampala for Abuse of office and remanded.
The duo; Kimera Tom, a Senior Procurement Officer and Maliza Mukembo Tibewolwa, a Senior Human Resources & Administration Officer appeared before the court today 20th October 2023.
The two are alleged to have irregularly approved Deloitte Uganda Ltd to provide consultancy Services for the recruitment of Ssendegeya Stanley as Managing Director at the Cooperation, an act that caused financial loss to govt.
According to a statement issued by the State House Anti-Corruption Unit, the two committed the offence in 2021 while members of the evaluation Committee for the recruitment process.
They have been remanded till 24th October, 2023 when they will re-appear in court for their bail application.
The investigation of the two follows President Museveni’s instruction for the dissolution of the entire Board of Directors of URC last year and dismissal of Ssendegeya whom he said was unqualified for the job.
President Museveni in his directive said, Ssendegeya was unqualified, inexperienced and was irregularly recruited as a result of influence by a board member, Ben Twodo.
Ssendegeya’s recruitment sharply divided the URC Board with some petitioning the office the IGG to investigate.
BACKGROUND
The CEO job advert required a master’s degree as a minimum and six years of experience as a member of top management both of which Sendegeya lacked. He had been chief finance officer at URC for four years as opposed to six.
Before URC, he was the Manager Collections at Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) and was many positions away from directly reporting to the Commissioner General.
Between him and CG were the Assistant Commissioner and full Commissioner. This means he can’t count any of the years at URA as covering him up for the relevant top managerial experience that was required in the advert for the URC CEO Job.
When it comes to the requirement for a master’s degree, still Sendegeya was below par because he had a BCOM degree and some ACCA qualifications which can’t give him the master’s degree equivalent.
It’s against this background that a whistle blower recently reported to the IGG asking for an inquiry. Claiming that some board members and Deloite officials who conducted the recruitment didn’t act independently, the whistle blower wanted the IGG to invalidate the recruitment and order a fresh process.
As part of the investigations, the IGG has been summoning and interrogating URC board members to explain themselves on the alleged conflict of interest. The Board Chairman Karuhanga has been grilled already and the same applies to Sendegeya and Ben Twodo who chairs the HR committee of the board.
Twodo , who is a very old retired accountant had wanted the IGG to receive a joint explanation from Board members, a request which was rejected and the IGG insisted to interrogate each board member separately.
Some board members, who didn’t want Sendegeya to become the CEO have given the IGG a lot of dirty information showing the entire recruitment was skewed to favor Sendegeya.
Sources at the IGG reveal that one of the board members said some of them opposed the giving of the job to Sendegeya but they were overpowered by Twodo who even brought in Deloitte to do the needful as opposed to KPMG which had a better recruitment proposal.
The IGG is also wondering why immediately after making Sendegeya the CEO, Deloitte was paid close to 100m to do consultancy work advising on job restructuring at URC.
This same restructuring consultancy had already been undertaken by Dama Consultants which is based at Uganda House and their report had contents not different from what Deloitte came up with. The IGG is also wondering why the board allowed spending 100m on Deloitte when Dama Consultants’ balance hadn’t been paid and the old Kenyan man who owns it even went to court.
The Board members have been squeezed to explain why they gave the job to someone without a master’s degree and enough experience when there are other applicants like Eng. Reuben Tumwebaze who had worked in Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) and Andrew Kilama Lajul from Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA), who were more than qualified.
Apart from Karuhanga, other board members include Moses Mwase, Keen Twesigye, David Kapsunduy, Ben Twodo, Jowali Kyeyago, Hajjat Aphwa Sebyala and Patrick Kabunapuchi who is always very cautious on doing the right thing.
