On Tuesday Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) Board of Directors headed by Ms. Emely Kugonza issued the interdiction letter to Executive Director Jolly Kaguhangire.
Among others she was accused of corruption and gross mismanagement of the authority by embarking on a smear campaign to those she perceived a threat in her line of duty.T
The letter written by whistleblowers considered to be staff of UIA to the Inspectorate General of Government (IGG) Irene Mulyagonja appealing to her to investigate Kyahangire.
It was also sent to the Speaker of Parliament, the Chairman, Public Accounts Committee The Chair (COSASE), the Chair, Equal Opportunities Committee, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of State for Investments, the PSST, Ministry of Finance and UIA Board of Directors.
Below we produce the full unedited letter;
RE: GROSS MISMANAGEMENT OF UGANDA INVESTMENT AUTHORITY BY THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JOLLY KAMUGIRA KAGUHANGIRE
Reference is made to our earlier letter to you on the above subject matter.
We wish to provide you with further details to expedite your investigation into our complaints about the Executive Director Jolly Kamugira Kaguhangire.
In an attempt to discredit UIA staff and Management, the ED embarked on a smear campaign through the online media platforms like Chimp reports, Mulengera news within the first three months of her contract.
Through her PA, she started leaking false information to the public against UIA.
She pays about 4 million per article. She used this method to manipulate the Board into agreeing with her that a restructure was very necessary.
It is a text book technique in change management that for stakeholders to recognize the need for change, the change champion creates a sense of urgency by painting a worse picture than reality and sometimes even leaking damaging information against the organisation.
This is what the ED did to advance her selfish interests of getting rid of everyone in WA so that she can hire her close family relatives and friends.
As soon as she joined UIA, negative media stories started circulating in the newspapers. For example;
- a) She started anonymously `whistleblowing” about UIA activities especially the actions of her predecessors. As soon as she learnt that UIA did not receive all the land that was degazetted, a story was printed in the media that a whistle blower had reported to the Land Inquiry about the issue.
- b) She paid Mulengera news and chimp reports to publish stories about interdicted UIA staff, about the restructuring process where the board was accused of receiving bribes and interviewing lower staff. (This was when the Board conducted interviews where many of the incumbent staff passed the interviews.
This did not suit her understanding of restructuring which to her means getting rid of all experienced staff and hiring her incompetent relatives and friends. Thus she released the story to intimidate the Board into allowing her to be in charge of the interviews.
She convinced the Board that board’s decision to handle the interviews in restructuring process was illegal and yet appointment of staff is a board mandate and management only carries out as delegated by Board. And indeed Board fell in her trap because it decided to let Management handle the shortlisting for the positions that had been advertised externally- the shortlisting exercise by Directors hit a snag and was not completed because the ED wanted to manipulate the process and force them to shortlist her friends who did not have the minimum required qualifications, a case in point is when she wanted them to state that a friend of hers who had just 2 diplomas could be equated to a masters degree! )
She either did not know or did not care that such things bring down the reputation of the institution. All she cared about was the President seeing how bad the situation is/was so that she can come out as a savior and gain favour.
Her actions have resulted into UIA being considered a joke by foreign and local investors. Negative stories about UIA make investors lose confidence in investing in Uganda. An audit into the number of investment licences issued in 2015/16 and the number issued in her first year in UIA will prove the total decline her actions have caused on the institution. Additionally, these leakages have affected UIA’s potential to find alternative funding; the would be partners have turned down requests for funding citing unstable institution as a ground, that they cannot trust the staff they are discussing with since it is not clear how long they will be with the institution. Yet we all know how badly UIA needs alternative funding!!
She connived with staff in the President’s office to torture UIA staff who had refused
to buy a swamp being sold by government stooges in Namanve. Part of the land was a lake, part of a UNRA road, parts fell in the MA KIBP industrial park land and the rest were permanent swamps thus the UM contracts committee and the evaluation committee refused to approve purchase of the land despite pressure from some government mafias (the team actually followed your good office’s advice about this transaction).
She got a letter from the President’s office requesting CMI to investigate the officials who refused to purchase the land. She personally took the file to CMI and even named some officials she wanted out of MA to be investigated. She further asked that the Board Chairman also be summoned to CMI so that he could see how powerful she was and not stand in the way of her future illegal actions. (The ploy seems to have worked because the Chairman intimidates board members into doing whatever she wants however illogical or detrimental to the organisation it is.)
Unfortunately for her, CMI found that UlA officials had done the right thing.
She was not satisfied with this so she tasked them to find a way to get rid of some people. So they instead arrested the Director Lands Division and the social scientist on trumped up charges of selling murram and sand. She influenced the Board to interdict them and when the interdiction ended it was extended despite the pleas of the innocent affected staff to the Board Chairman. He as usual ignored staff and other Board members and gave a go ahead to the ED to extend the interdiction.
In reality, the State Attorney handling the file found no evidence to charge the victims but she has refused to request the police for a report. She keeps lying to the Board that the report is not yet ready because she knows it will not be in her favour and the Chairman knows the truth but has not insisted on getting the report or reinstating the victims.
Staff are a responsibility of the Board, it is alarming that they were illegally detained by CMI, imprisoned, interdicted and the Board Chairman has refused to do the right thing.
Interestingly, she got rid of the Social scientist who used to fight murram and sand dealers in the Park so the vice has escalated and there are rumours that she is now collecting money from the murram and sand dealers. The Board has been complicit in her illegal dealings and abuse of staff. The ED”s travels and salaries to illegally appointed staff has depleted all the land development funds to a point that this current financial year nothing has been done in namanve, roads have npot been maintained and turned bushy, river namanve not trained and so investor plots have flooded making it impossible to progress their developments.
She has exposed UIA to a risk of litigation because of her incompetence. She is determined to withdraw land from all of investors allocated land in the industrial parks especially Namanve without justifiable grounds despite the legal risks. She was advised by Management and the technical people about the dangers of withdrawing land without notice, or from companies which are constructing but she ignored them. She proceeded to mislead the Board to withdraw land from many serious investors which has caused distrust among investors of UIA management and the
In addition, several companies have sued UIA and costs will have to be incurred. (Interestingly, she bypassed the Ag. Director of Lands Division and asked the Quantity Surveyor she recruited to do Land surveying and the Physical planner to come up with a withdrawal list.) She tried to bully management into consenting to the list of withdrawals even before it was done but they refused. However, even when the list was presented and management edited it, she disregarded it and presented her own list to the Board.
This has led to a backlash against WA. Some investors are threatening to transfer their projects to other countries. (Evidence of this is available.)
In addition, she received 400m from an investor in exchange for allocation of 8 acres of land to three sister companies ( Hoima Sugar Ltd, Nile fibreboard and Tasco Ltd). She received this money in person and an investigation can prove this.
She uses her husband as an “investment consultant” who shamelessly holds ‘his meetings in UIA meeting rooms and charges the investors fees. To make it worse, she even manipulated the system and had her husband illegally travel to and attend a government meeting in Russia against protests from MOFA! This is gross abuse of office.
iii. RECRUITMENTS
The ED influenced and manipulated the recruitment of Investment Executives to ensure that her relatives and friends get jobs.
* She interfered with the shortlisting process, when the shortlist was presented to Management for approval, she forced Management to lower the pass mark so that her people could be shortlisted.
* She insisted on having the interview questions before hand and gave them to her group of people to revise so that they could pass the interview. Evidence to this can be given. And so most of them purportedly “excelled” in the interviews.
* When the interviews were conducted and some of her people had not gone through, she insisted on increasing the number so that they could be covered. Whereas management agreed to recruit five IEs, she gave appointment letters to 8!
That means she made a personal decision to hire two extra people and should be paying them personally. Incidentally, UIA failed to carry out core activities because she insisted on recruiting staff which had not been budgeted for. This has greatly impacted on UIA performance and FDI has decreased. Even SME activities and industrial park development activities were halted because of her mismanagement.
* The irregularly recruited staff were allocated to two departments so that they could spy on the old staff and take over their jobs when their contractsl ended because she has illegally been refusing to renew staff contracts. These new staff did not qualify to be put in those department so they are incompetent but are acting like the department heads and she directly gives them work, which they mess up and rewards them with trips abroad for workshops which do not fall in the dockets for which they were recruited. (This is actually corruption). Previously, management would jointly decide in which staff was best suited to attend a particular training or workshop but now she decides on her phone.
She has turned UIA into an extension of her home, it is no longer run institution.like an
Examples of the new staff incompetence include the Bionas mess, the botched land withdrawals, etc. Most of them cannot even draft simple official letters. A chat with any of their supervisors can reveal more incompetence.
In addition, she uses the new IEs to carry out irregularities.
Anything which is against procedure that the senior staff would question before doing she hands it to her loyal incompetent pack. Ultimately, the Board will be answerable for all these illegalities carried out under their watch. (Some of the new staff have criminal records for having defrauded investors before joining UIA, others send investors with land in Namanve messages that they can assist them with getting survey instructions expeditiously in exchange for monetary rewards, others draft letters to UIA on behalf of people who have connived with ULC to steal Namanve land from UIA. An investigation into this can yield evidence.).
It should be noted that she even went ahead to confirm all these incompetent staff of hers secretly without even passing through their supervisors (directors) to evaluate them!! On the other hand, she is witch-hunting the Deputy Directors who were recruited by the Board because following due process kicked out her incompetent choices save for one.
* Furthermore, she recently appointed ‘interns’ who are all close family members, in laws and friends. There is usually a list of internship applicants and the placements are given on merit by management.
However, she personally chose her relatives and gave them placements. She took the opportunity to bring in some ‘interns’ who are not even students so that they can be in place to take over people’s jobs when she illegally refuses to renew their contracts.
Its interesting that her directive to recruit the so called interns included even persons that have never applied for placement at UIA!. Incidentally, the proper procedure is that a request for contract renewal for lower staff s presented to Management for a decision.
However, since she joined UIA, she unilaterally decides whether to renew a contract or not based on her paranoia or desire to have her family members in strategic poitions. When Management questions her about non-renewal of staff contracts without any reason, she lies Management that she is acting on Board directives!
All this under the watch of the Board Chairman.
* She further recruited a diploma holder as her PA without subjecting her to any criteria or interview and now pays her the salary of a Senior Investment Executive! This is de-motivating to IEs who are graduates some with Masters who get less salary than the diploma holder. It’s worth noting titat her Predecessors used to handle that office with just one staff, the EA to the ED, but she now has four staff members employed to do the job one EA used to do! Moreover the EA to the former ED (whom she kicked out unilaterally) was a graduate but was earning a salary of an Investment executive and did all roles in that office yet now a diploma holder earns a salary of a senior investment executive yet she barely has work to do given that there are now four staff in that office!! Surely causing government financial loss because of the incompetence of one individual who also hires incompetent people to do the job of one person.
- Insubordination
Over time, the board has directed the ED to do several things but she has blatantly refused. The Board is going to be held culpable in the future.
* She was directed to reduce the salary of her EA from a Director’s salary but she is still paying her. The Board directed her to terminate that staff while on probation and a proper recruitment be done but she refused. And went ahead to confirm her instead! Who is going to cover that loss to government? The ED who refused to adhere or the Board Chairman who watches she continues with her illegalities?
* She was ordered by the Minister of Finance and the Board to reduce personal expenses on her body guards and lead car but she has refused. In fact, she maliciously got the Director Lands out of the way so she can use the newly purchased double cabin vehicle for field work of Land Development Division as her lead car because the one she had commandeered was not matching with her new car and was spoilt a few months after she reported because she employed a non-qualified driver… all the other senior drivers of UIA can attest to this!!. Interestingly, she fell out with one of her drivers who she had given a four year contract directly without probation (yet these drivers were never interviewed) and recruited another driver, but the other one still has a contract and continues to be paid a salary yet doing nothing!
She therefore has three drivers and several guards who have to be paid allowances, salary and fuel for two cars wherever she goes. The Board Chairman is aware of this but he has done nothing, is he going to compensate government for this loss?
* She has further tainted the name of the UIA board by “leaking” allegations against them to her bribed online news platforms. She even taps their phones and has convinced her security connections to spy on them. The so called whistle blowers letters to IGG were signed by her personal office messenger. Any interaction with staff will reveal this.
- The Board had directed that no more temporary staff be recruited in MA due to the legal risks involved. However, she terminated the temporary staff and we all thought she was complying with the Board decision only for her to replace them with children of people she owes favors to act as temps and this vice continues.
She has frustrated recruitment processes for key positions such as the front office because she wants to keep her friends children there Purportedly acting as receptionists. We all know how important the front office is to an IPA like UIA, surely that is one station that should be manned by professionals in that field.
* She has created so many scandals for UIA even with government Agencies and Ministries that UIA work and funding is seriously affected. A casd in point is Ministry of Finance, she believes that all institutional work should be done through her intelligence networks, as such she passes all work to them mbu for security checks. This has antagonized most of our sister agencies and is the reason UIA is not getting its supplementary funds released despite having been passed by Parliament.
* She directed that no correspondence to the Board Chairman should be forwarded to him without her approval. This enables her screen and vet Chairman’s letters from outside MA and she hides away those that are not favourable to her or she takes them back to the senders and negotiats with them to alter the contents to suit her!
Security: All the staff in ED’s office including her Administrative Assistant are all armed with pistols, something that has left all staff in fear for their lives because one cannot know when all these guns can be used against us. I mean, why would an ED with body guards being paid for by IAA surround herself with armed staff??
All her actions are against UIA and Uganda is losing investors due to her messes and is going to lose more when staff experienced and trained in investment promotion are sacked in the restructure.
By the way, even those who may survive the axe will with time leave because it is just impossible to work in such an environment. The ED does not take any technical advice from staff, when such advice is provided to her, she subjects it to review by her external friends and often time wrong advice is given which backfires. But of most importance is that it means UIA activities are not being decided by the Board or Management but by a kitchen cabinet and so all MA work both confidential and not is now in the hands of outsiders!! Neighboring countries are the beneficiaries of the mess Uganda is in due to the scandals she has created in UIA. Actually a big number of the staff she illegally hires are of Rwandese origin.
The key question that will be asked is why the UIA Board has not acted against an incompetent
person who is continuously causing loss to government and tearing down an important government institution? Additionally, if (and this may be just a matter of time) any disgruntled person decides to take up these matters legally, the Board will be held personally liable!
There isn’t a single issue raised in this letter that cannot be proven.
However, being scared our safety, lives and jobs, we cannot put our names as staff of UIA. But we trust that you will investigate and get to the bottom of this matter.
NB: Should any harm come to any staff of OA or their loved ones, just know it will be Jolly Kaguhangire because she has put spies all around us.