Through his X handle, the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) and also the Senior Presidential Advisor on Special Operations Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba announced that this week, he is going to meet the leadership of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) to discuss a number of issues concerning the country’s capital city.
Even though Gen Muhoozi stated that the meeting will concentrate on road construction and maintenance, after announcing that he was going to be the last word on who to be given a contract to construct roads in the city, a number of staff interviewed by Ono Bwino pleaded to the maverick UPDF General to also help them pick interest in Human Resource Directorate of KCCA.
“We have confidence in Gen Muhoozi, yes, it is true that there is a lot of corruption in physical planning and other directorates but the big issue currently at city hall is concerning the irregularities in recruiting new staff. We are working under fear, our labour rights are being violated and we decided to keep quite because we are scared of losing our jobs but inside us, we are dying,” a staff working with law enforcement department said.
He claims that they are working seven days a week, fifteen hours a day without getting leave including sick leave yet a number of their colleagues’ lose their jobs because of absenteeism resulting from sickness due to overworking.
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He claims that when they engage their immediate supervisor who is also the Manager of Law Enforcement at KCCA, Senior Surprenant of Police (SSP) Kassim Matovu, he just rubbishes them and tells them they are free to leave the job.
“He boasted that even if we petition the Executive Director (Hajat Sharifah Buzeki) nothing is going to change because, she is his old girl and he is executing her directives,” a staff claim.
He added that while they were complaining, they learnt from connected fellow staff that Matovu, Buzeki and Public Service are in high level discussions on how to replace the current staff in their department with new ones who understand their working style.
“The General should know that the problem we have here s each Executive Director uses their office to recruit their people. So they have to dismiss those they find working. There is no security for our jobs. This has been a practice since Jeniffer Musisi, Dorothy Kisaka and now Buzeki also wants to do the same,” he added.
The development comes days after Amos Bagonza, the Makerere university ward councilor petitioned Buzeki demanding her to release a list of all KCCA staff and their responsibilities insisting that there was a lot of irregularities in recruiting staff at City Hall.
He further claimed that there are ghost workers on the KCCA payroll even though Ono Bwino established that since her appointment to head the technical wing at KCCA, Buzeki has been cleaning the authority’s payroll to delete ghost works.
Staff also want Gen Muhoozi to look into the allegations that Buzeki deployed Matovu the head the law enforcement department yet he was still serving a suspension slapped on him by his bosses in police.
“Now Buzeki is fighting to shield him yet he was cited in conniving with police to arrest people on petty offences and detaining them for more than six days in the Lord Mayor’s office. That was unprofessional,” a staff said.
However, Buzeki shielded her staff insisting that they were did not have a hand in detaining suspects in the Lord Mayor and his deputy’s office.
She accused police and judiciary officers of doing so.
When contacted, Daniel Nuwabine the KCCA spokesperson defended the issue of staff working without leave explaining that even their top boss Buzeki works seven days because they have a shared agenda of making Kampala a good city for everyone.
He noted that KCCA will not just release the list of its staff to Bagonza as he wants noting that there are procedures and protocols to follow to access such information.
