By John V Sserwaniko

The ongoing recruitment of staff at UBC has been halted to allow line Minister Frank Tumwebaze to address a possible legal obstacle following the expiry of the governing board members’ term of office. Yet legally, it’s the board that is mandated to hire staff. The Simon Kaheru-led Board had their mandate expire on Tuesday 10^th July 2018. This prompted members of the Revamp Team (that has been working with what remains of the UBC management to fast-track the Corporation’s recovery) to advise that any recruitment decisions taking place after 10^th July could successfully be challenged in court as the Board would be acting ultra vires (means without authority). Tumwebaze listened and the recruitment process was put on halt. This means even the more than 1,000 job applicants whose shortlist came out a few days ago for the various job openings will have to wait. Remedially, the ICT ministry leadership has written to the Solicitor General seeking legal guidance especially on the possibility of the Kaheru board’s tenure being prolonged for at least two or three months to be able to accomplish the recruitment exercise. “This option is being considered because whereas the process to name a new Board has commenced, it won’t take less than 5 months to have them in place because the matter has to be put on the cabinet schedule which doesn’t come that quickly. If we are to wait for the new Board, that will create more problems and derail the UBC recovery because time is going to be lost which isn’t an option,” said a top official close to the UBC recovery process. The Revamp Team too is expiring later this month and should that happen amidst a vacuum at the Board, things will only become more complicated.

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In a related development, it has been confirmed (as was earlier reported by Eagle Online) that NTV big man Maurice Mugisha has been interviewed and passed as the pioneer incoming Deputy MD for the entire Corporation. “He is the first of his kind because UBC hasn’t had deputy MD before. This was all done to strengthen management and decision-making at the MD level because the incumbent MD Agaba is too incompetent yet his contract still has some two years to go. If you sacked him now and brought in Maurice, he legally sues you and you have big problems. This is why we tactfully had to bring in Maurice to beef up Agaba as he waits to take over in two years’ time,” said an official on strict condition of anonymity. Those in the know haven’t been surprised why Maurice is seemingly being favored by the Museveni system. His wife Irene Birungi, a former Manager at UBC, was recruited to work as PA to PPS Molly Kamukama and the two ladies have ensured the hostility for which Museveni previously criticized NTV becomes a thing of the past. And as of now, Museveni no longer has any problem with the way NTV covers his things and government in general. Instead it’s Kin Karisa’s NBS he has lately been complaining about. So there is clear background as to why all Museveni handlers are now unanimous that Maurice Mugisha is someone the Ugandan state can predictably do business with having been properly oriented in what State House likes and dislikes.  Asked what exactly would be Maurice’s assignment, the official said: “He will in effect be manager TV section because, UBC TV being the flagship station for a Corporation that has 4 TVs and 29 radio stations, we need to revamp it into something very strong and that is where Maurice is going to help us a lot. We assume he has very good TV experience having been in top echelons at NTV.” Maurice, who barely earned Shs6m salary at NTV, will be earning a whopping Shs22.5m at UBC plus many other benefits including monthly housing allowance, fuel allocation, chauffeur-driven posh car just to mention a few. “Nobody is going to renege on that commitment to pay him so much per month because the UBC payroll has since been integrated onto the larger government payroll,” said a source. Besides Maurice Mugisha, Dr. Peter Kaggwa is another big fish the Revamp Team has head-hunted and got into their net. He will be serving as Manager Finance at the newly revamped corporation. One of the few civil servants holding a PhD, Dr. Kaggwa has been director audit at Tumwebaze’s ICT Ministry. He also has an MBA from one of the best Universities abroad. His recruitment was rationalized by concerned officials as follows: “Financial management is one area the corporation has for long been falling short of the expected very minimum corporate governance standards and his astuteness will bridge the gap and stop leakages as well as ushering in the required financial discipline.” The other big fish that was targeted was one of the top ladies in NBS TV’s news department (names withheld). She had been contacted by the Revamp Team and she readily accepted the offer but was unfortunately not found a good enough the moment she was subjected to a basic interview just like it was done for Maurice Mugisha. This ill-fated NBS lady was to serve as Manager UBC News Bureau (some called it News Hub), which is going to be a very influential post at the newly revamped Corporation. She had been offered Shs8m per month but was let go after the team found her not good enough. The person holding this position will be the one to handle all the news for the entire corporation and it will only be after his/her approval that stories will be distributed and aired on all the different UBC Corporation platforms. The various channels will report news in a manner that compliments each other as opposed to competing. “We haven’t given up; the head hunting is ongoing and there is a seasoned journalist in one of the big media houses that we are negotiating with and is a big name in the industry. The person is ready to quit their current station to join UBC because of the juicy salary offer which nobody else is currently offering except UBC,” the official explained. The official said in total there are 9 positions whose occupants will have to be head-hunted as opposed to coming through the general advert. The others are Head Legal, Head HRM and Head Corporate Affairs. The latter had been offered to Jane Kasumba who, however, declined as indicated in the recent notice she tendered to MD Agaba disclosing her wish not to renew her contract that is ending in less than 2 months from now. The source explained that excellent legal, HRM and Corporate Managers are already being sweet-talked to quit their current jobs and be part of the new UBC team. As for the Board, the source disclosed that one or two members of the old Board stand a chance to be retained and that Chairman Simon Kaheru isn’t one of them. “He will have to go because he has been such a disappointment to many people in authority positions and it’s because of the good courtesy of the NRM otherwise he would by now be facing tough questioning for the things that have gone wrong under his tenure,” the source insisted in reference to Kaheru who currently holds a juicy job at Namanve-based Century Bottling Company (makers of Coke soda). There is optimism that with government taking care of the salaries, all the money the revamped corporation will be making will go into quality programming and new equipment acquisition. “Once you have good programming, quality equipment and a good signal coupled with well-motivated employees, there is no way why UBC won’t increase its share of the advertising budget for both government and private sector,” said the source adding that a Presidential Order could be issued ring-fencing a fraction of the advertising budget in all government MDAs in favor of UBC. The total wage bill of the newly revamped UBC will roughly be Shs210m after 25% gratuity (Shs53m per month), NSSF’s 10% (Shs21m) have been deducted from each employee’s monthly salary. For comments, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755.