By Mulengera Reporters
A group of more than 250 Ugandan surveyors have signed onto a confidential petition pleading with Uganda’s very powerful Chief of Defense Forces (CDF) Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba to urgently intervene and crack the whip on a senior Minister (who also happens to be a retired general) as a way of pushing back against his interference into the recruitment of the Lands Ministry Commissioner in charge of Mapping & Surveys.
This is a very consequential position whose head of department (a Commissioner) oversees the land mapping and surveying work done by thousands of surveyors operating across Uganda. As mandated by the law, Uganda’s Public Service Commission (PSC) at the beginning of this year put out adverts calling for suitable candidates to apply for the job.
Inadequately qualified William Matovu, who years earlier was acrimoniously kicked out of UNRA’s land acquisition and PAPs’ management unit by Allen Kagina, was among those who applied and had the backing of the Minister General whose anomalous conduct Gen MK is being asked to inquire into. As early as March, the PSC refused to shortlist Matovu on grounds that he was ineligible for lacking the Masters of Science degree in land surveying-related fields.
His supporters petitioned the IGG accusing the PSC members of bias and all manner of things. Acting in good faith as always, the IGG halted the process and directed the PSC to repeat the entire process. Still William Matovu’s name didn’t feature on the new shortlist of candidates as he continued to be crippled by lack of the required master’s degree. As the process proceeded, his godfathers (including the Minister General) mounted pressure onto the IGG and decision makers at PSC.
Having become lately empowered on purpose by the President and his entire State House bureaucracy, the current IGG Aisha Naluzze Batala consistently resisted the pressure from Minister General over whom the petitioning surveyors believe Gen MK has authority.
In her 4th November letter, addressed to the PSC Secretary, the IGG vacated her earlier orders of 8th and 27th July 2026, implying that the PSC can now proceed and go ahead to complete the process to have the substantive Commissioner Mapping & Surveys recruited. This conclusion was arrived at after the IGG grew the balls to disregard pressure from the Minister General, upon realizing that there was never merit in the recruitment process-denting claims pro-William Matovu whistle blowers kept making.
In their petition to Gen MK, the surveyors are of the view that it’s too early to write off the Minister General because he is not known for being one who backs off, loses battles and agrees to let go. That there is continuing pressure on new bosses at the PSC to find a way of re-starting the recruitment process so that the Minister General’s favored candidate becomes Commissioner Mapping & Surveys.
In their petition, the surveyors inform Uganda’s powerful CDF that, important as it is, the Lands Ministry’s Department of Mapping & Surveys hasn’t had a substantive head (or Commissioner) since the year 2009 when Justine Bwogi headed it. He was overseeing the Entebbe-based department while at the same time serving as Secretary Uganda Land Commission.
Since the Bwogi exit, the Department hasn’t had a substantive head as whoever has served there was heading it in acting capacity. These include Moses Byesiza, Nsubuga Kajumbula, Dr. Okia, Wilson Ogaro, Henry Opio, Jasper Kakooza, John Lutaaya all the way to the Ag Commissioner Ibrahim Magemeso who is holding forte today. Calling on Gen MK to treat the matter as urgent and prevail on the rampaging Minister General before the recruitment process once again gets jeopardized, the petitioning surveyors disclosed their names besides attaching their respective Surveyor Registration Board (SRB) numbers.
They argue that the CDF should reach out and directly rebuke the rampaging Minister General so that his meddling efforts aimed at derailing the recruitment of a substantive Mapping & Surveying Commissioner don’t succeed. They assert that lack of substantive leadership at the Commissioner level has stalled many things in the Mapping & Surveying sub sector for the last 18 years, to the detriment of the individual practicing surveyors.
They assert that a substantive Commissioner is urgently needed to head Mapping & Surveys so that the amendments to the archaic old provisions of the Surveys Act and the Surveyors Registration Board Act can be effected, because the same is long overdue. That there is need to urgently review and reorganize things in the way the mapping and surveying business is conducted in Uganda, yet the same can’t be expedited without a substantive Commissioner being in place.
The President wants the boundaries of Uganda as a country and internal boundaries distinguishing districts, cities and other local governments urgently reviewed or updated, and surveying has a lot of input to be leveraged. In contrast, other departments under the same Lands Ministry which are well led by substantive Commissioners/heads of department are very far.
Examples include Valuation Department under Gilbert Kerimundu under whose substantive leadership, lots of good work has been accomplished over the years. Valuation practitioners were able to coordinate under guidance of the Kerimundu department and got a new law (the Valuation Act). They also have a Board of their own as Valuation practitioners.
All this is contained in the surveyors’ petition to the CDF who they are requesting to help them constrain the rampaging Minister General from continuing to interfere into the recruitment process of a substantive Commissioner for Mapping & Surveys. Besides the Institute, the valuers now also have their own registration board, deriving authority from the new law. The surveyors are envious none of this progress can be achieved in their case because of the chaos the prolonged absence of a substantive commissioner has occasioned at the Entebbe-based Department of Mapping & Surveys.
MORE INQUIRY AREAS
In the same petition, the surveyors also call on Gen CDF to cause investigations into the circumstances under which an inadequately experienced surveyor (called DT) was recently accelerated and transferred from the Masindi Lands Ministry Zonal Office (MZO) to become a big man at the Wakiso MZO where he oversees more qualified fellow surveyors yet for him isn’t even enrolled on the surveyors roll. They are asserting that Wakiso MZO is too important to be messed up to that extent. That the imposition of the inadequately qualified DT has greatly demoralized surveying staff at the Wakiso MZO.
In the same petition (also copied to the President), the CDF is also implored to cause an inquiry into why people in the top technical leadership positions at the Lands Ministry have been sleeping on the job for all these years without exhibiting any appetite to have an office as important as Commissioner Mapping & Surveys substantively and expeditiously filled.
That in the year 2022, a recruitment process was attempted and undertaken by the PSC and even a suitable/unopposed candidate (a highly credentialed professor from Makerere University) was identified but top officials inside the Ministry curiously dragged their feet and the recruitment was never completed. Was all this sabotage because someone wanted to eat in chaos resulting from prolonged absence of a substantive Commissioner? The surveyors want the Gen MK-instigated investigations to find out.
As part of her investigations, the IGG insisted on leaving no stone unturned as investigators (during the four months’ investigations period) had to go as far as scrutinizing all the disclosed personal integrity-related information relating to things like where the respective applicants hail and went to school or trained from. The surveyors are of the view that whoever finally gets will have been the most qualified because a lot of caution has gone into the latest IGG-supervised recruitment process by the PSC. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
