By Otim Nape
Investigative efforts by this Mulengera news website have established the reasons why Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI) Director Dr. Jackson Orem has lately been associated with renewed hostilities against his political supervisor Minister Jane Ruth Aceng of Health. Orem supporters have lately been out foul mouthing Aceng and PS Dr. Diana Atwine of being keenly interested in influencing of procurement of the 6 sets of bunker machines for UCI from Israeli dealers. The very prayerful duo has also been accused of planning to knife Orem who we have also established faces an internal rebellion from his own professional/technical staff members who feel, for his own reasons, he sidelines them in favor of none technical ones led by UCI Senior Administrator Richard Tumwesigye. Its revealed that fearing being overshadowed, Orem has been sidelining senior cancer specialists at the Institute in favor of Tumwesigye whom he always takes for meetings in places like Parliament or even State House fearing to be professionally overshadowed by some of these colleagues who professionally are even more suited than him. This and other areas shall be revisited in greater detail in our subsequent publications on the UCI saga. For purposes of this article, we shall focuss on one recent development involving authorities at the Health Ministry that must have left Orem very restless.
THE DETAILS:
The matter related to over Shs1.3bn Dr. Orem had used from the African Development Bank Loan to the GoU meant to transform UCI into a Center of Excellence that all EAC leaders desire it to be to serve the entire region. Besides infrastructural development, the AfDB loan aims at building capacity of staff at UCI. In his letter to his superiors at the Ministry, Orem forwarded names staff to be sent to Universities abroad for further studies as part of the staff development component under the AfDB support whose donors recently met the President and protested why the project implementation was so poor and time was being lost. On his letter, Orem attached a list of staff members he wanted to go and study abroad on very exorbitant rates moreover for courses that are already ably offered at Makerere. In a potential scandal that threatens to eclipse that of Specioza Kazibwe that saw the ex-VP receive over Shs1bn to go do a PhD at Harvard University, Orem requested to be authorized to spend Shs858m for Dr. Annet Nakaganda’s PhD in Epidemiology. His own schedule sent to the Ministry shows that Nakaganda will spend four years at University of Manchester in UK at a cost of Shs858,400,000! The 2nd person he proposed to benefit from the training under the AfDB project was someone appropriately name Benedict Akimana.
Orem proposes to spend Shs162.7m on this gentleman’s 1 year training at Kettering Cancer Center in the USA. The course is psych-Oncology. The 3rd person is Sandra Naluzze on whom Orem proposes to spend Shs363m to train for 2 years at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology for masters of Laboratory Medicine. The sum total for the three comes to Shs1,384,563,307. Orem makes it clear that “These costs exclude the cost of air tickets, conference attendances and publications” meaning the overall total expense could as well exceed Shs2bn. Orem explains that this investment is essential for UCI to become the East African Center of Excellence that EAC Presidents some years back earmarked it to be. Efforts to get comment from Dr. Orem were futile as he characteristically never took our calls but gratefully his letter dated 25th January 2018 seeking approval to spend the money is self explanatory. He says therein that this is not his personal decision but that of the Training Steering Committee. He adds these are great specialties UCI badly needs for its staff to be able to transform into the regional Center of Excellence that President Museveni and fellow EAC presidents desire it to be. But at the Wandegeya-based Ministry, the PS Diana Atwine and Aceng were unanimous in rejecting Orem’s proposal. “We cannot train one epidemiologist at nearly Shs1bn.
The rest are okay,” one of the two ladies furiously replied, something that is understood to lately have angered Orem. The two Museveni blue eyed ladies further reasoned to Orem there was nothing unique about Annet Nakaganda training in the UK because in any case that same course is equally available at Makerere where that same money can train a larger number of epidemiologists. The other problem was that Orem was seeking retrospective approval from the Ministry long after committing the tax payers’ money for the same. Being one who never fears to offend what publicly are thought to be powerful technocrats, provided she is doing the right thing, Aceng has since confronted Orem requiring him to immediately refund the over Shs858m spent on Nakaganda’s training in the UK without her prior authorization. Reliable sources say, this coupled with the fact that Aceng rejected his preferred names for UCI governing board, has made Orem very frustrated and hence the decision to start wars aimed at antagonizing the two powerful ladies running the show at the Wandegeya-based ministry. To comment on this & other Mulengera news stories, reach us on 0703164755
