By Otim Nape
Confusion and chaos have engulfed the recruitment process for the Executive Director for PPDA following a disagreement on the role Public Service Commission (PSC) ought to play in the entire process. In his presidential executive order issued sometime in 2017, President Museveni directed that PSC must always been involved in the recruitment of CEOs and a few other top managers for the government parastatals including those that always considered themselves very autonomous under the relevant Acts of Parliament establishing them. Ordinarily under the relevant Acts, the power to recruit the CEOs always rested with the governing board but due to lack of members with the requisite expertise on HR matters, the boards in most cases would outsource the recruitment entrusting it with any of the numerous recruitment consultancy firms operating around town. Museveni found this arrangement unsatisfactory for a number of reasons including the fact that many of the consultancy firms lacked the integrity and the firmness to resist manipulation by the board members who always come in insisting on the job going to certain applicants who may not even be suitable. “Many of those firms are brief case companies with barely any name to protect. The only very serious and reputable firm is Dama Consultants and of course the KPMGs, PWC and a few others,” said a knowledgeable source adding that because such grade A firms are too ethical and very big on integrity, governing boards tend to avoid them in favor of less prolific recruitment agencies. The other concern the President had was the fact that even when these parastatals barely have enough money for their core mandate, the governing boards corruptly spend colossal sums of money hiring recruitment agencies. In some agencies an agency that gives the highest kickback gets hired. The President’s view was that instead of wasting hundreds of millions paying these agencies, the PSC can be engaged at no cost because recruiting for government is already its mandate for which no extra payment or remuneration is required.
KAMUNTU’S UWA COMPLIES:
It’s in compliance with this well-reasoned out presidential order that agencies like UWA recently got the PSC playing a very central role in the recruitment of their ED. Bugoloobi-based NFA shunned PSC raising similar autonomy arguments like PPDA is raising and their ED recruitment process is anytime going to be nullified and cancelled by the Minister simply because PSC was sidelined. In the PPDA’s case, we are reliably informed, there are godfathers at the Finance Ministry who are very much interested in leaving out PSC so that the candidate of their choice becomes the next CEO at PPDA. Sources say that there are deeply vested interests amongst the big bosses at the Finance Ministry because the next PPDA CEO will have the last word on the multi-trillion procurement contracts regarding all the upcoming petroleum development-related infrastructure projects. “They want somebody they can eat with and that is why they are bent at keeping PSC out so that the heavily compromised board can simply be walked over to rubber stamp their preferred candidate,” said a knowledgeable source.
PPDA BOSSES GANG UP:
As a result, and emboldened by the powerful backing from the Finance Ministry, some of the board members at PPDA have sworn that PSC will only get involved over their dead bodies. Even when they would clearly benefit from the additional recruitment expertise from the PSC (that is even free of charge), guys at PPDA along with their powerful backers at Finance have insisted that PSC has nothing to do with their ED’s recruitment. This has prompted some interested candidates for the job (but feel disadvantaged by PSC’s exclusion) to ponder petitioning the IGG Irene Mulyagonja to intervene by compelling the PPDA BOD to let in PSC since their inclusion won’t have any additional expenses on part of the Procurement Authority. The war has escalated resulting into very counterproductive delays in the recruitment of the ED at PPDA. PSC, whose CEO is the relentless fighter Frank Musingwire, has also put their foot on the ground arguing the President’s executive order empowers them to participate and they cite Prof Ephraim Kamuntu-supervised UWA as an example because their new ED was recruited in a very transparent process that was spearheaded by PSC.
PPDA SPEAKS OUT:
This news website rang Benson Turamye, the Ag. ED at PPDA and he didn’t hide his frustrations with the continued delay to recruit the new CEO at PPDA. “My friend I think you have called a wrong person because I’m as disgruntled with this delay like any other person. I have been acting for a whole year and I’m really tired of this indecisiveness in the recruitment process. It’s not good for the organization; it’s not good for the country either. PPDA needs leadership that is substantively in office,” he said before censoring himself in the latter part of the phone call. “But I’m not anywhere involved in that recruitment and I’m not the right person to talk about it. Please call the Board Chairman [Prof Simeon Wanyama] because that is his exercise. He is the right person to tell you the latest update on that recruitment.” Asked whether he was among the candidates seeking to be recruited for the top job and are against PSC being involved, Turamye jocularly said: “Please be careful not to write stuff that isn’t well researched because I can choose that we meet in Court someday.” Immediately after saying this, Turamye said: “Let me go because I’m entering the lift and the network is going to be cut off.” We were unable to get comment from the PSC as each time we called, the lady picking the land line phone told us Mr. Frank Musingwire, who is the Secretary, (CEO of sorts) running the Commission was out of office. Watch this space! For comments, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755!
