The State minister for Works Fred Byamukama has revealed that more officials from the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (UCAA) will be fired from the authority next week following ongoing investigations into the illegal recruitment of staff at the Airport.
Min Byamukama made the revelation during an interview with NTV noting that President Yoweri Museveni had issued another directive to remove senior officials who were responsible for recruiting 152 staff members recently dismissed due to lacking the required academic qualifications.
The President’s directive followed an incident in which the wife of the late Julius Nyerere was trapped in a lift at Entebbe Airport for about five minutes during her visit to Uganda to meet the President.
“It is true, a few individuals went ahead and recruited about 152 staffs who didn’t have qualifications. For example, you find someone who is supposed to have a degree in a given position. But you find someone in actual senses finished S.6 and didn’t proceed anywhere, went to Nasser road and bought his degree. You find someone who has a certificate, but is holding a job of someone of a degree” he said.
Min Byamukama added, “We started seeing many incidents at the airport happening which could have even been controlled by these very staffs. For example, the president told you there was a lift. That lift could lock individuals sometimes abruptly and we have one of the most recent one, Mama Nyerere.
She is our good mother…… She was locked in the lift for about four to five minutes yet the electricians and the people opening, they knew the problem and were there”.
Byamukama noted that a number of incidents have occurred at the airport which have led to so far 1,000 employees being sampled in the investigation to guide the decisions that have been taken.
“You remember one of the incidents where the mosquito nets of the Ministry of Health were burned, people called it political but they had eaten money. They put some scandal in mosquito nets that the Ministry of Health burned it by themselves. Which was not true. You have seen leaking of air conditioning at the airport, even the way they attract our people at the airport which is the face of our country”.
Byamukama said they have carried out underground investigations to find out the schools which the staff attended.
“But as we were doing that, we got people starting retiring and resigning voluntarily yet they were still young and needed the job, this opened our minds, maybe there was something. We formed a team, the human resource of ministry of works and investigated, we moved school by school, results came back showing people had forged degrees because the universities disowned them”.
Byamukama said when called to defend themselves on the qualifications, only two were able to while the rest of the staff investigated didn’t have an answer.
“So far 152 people are already sacked, most of these are managers and supervisors of departments, then also those who do electrical engineering and maybe aeronautical information, those are the key areas. But now, the president elected even those who recruited them to be sacked, we have so far done with those who were recruited, they have gone already and now the next course of action is those who recruited them” he said.
The minister noted that investigation into the next batch of UCCA staff that is to be fired will be completed by Friday next week.
