By John V Sserwaniko
All isn’t well for Uganda’s Ambassador to Algeria JC Alintuma Nsambu against whom two powerful embassy officials have ganged up. Because the two officials control the finances at the mission, a lot of Embassy work has gone unfunded and all this is apparently meant to frustrate and cripple Alintuma’s efficiency as the Mission Head and eventually possibly quit. Our reliable sources disclosed that at the heart of the sharp disagreements is the fate of Euros100,000 (about Shs400m) that can’t be accounted for and when Alintuma, as the Mission Head, raised a red flag, he was easily misunderstood by Fredrick George Tushabe who is the accounting officer and Samson Kamugendera who is the financial attaché. Algeria is a Mission of great importance because of the existence of many bilateral agreements regarding security between Algiers and Kampala. When still IGP, Gen Kale Kayihura was on countless occasions assigned by the President to travel to Algiers to discuss security matters in the area of fighting terrorism and subsequently, many senior police officers have undergone training in Algiers. All this shows the importance the Maghreb country has for Kampala. Whereas none of them was willing to go on record, multiple sources both in the Kampala-based Foreign Affairs Ministry and embassy in Algeria confirmed existence of a crisis at the Algiers Mission after Alintuma developed irreconcilable differences with a small faction of his staff. “There is no doubt a big problem at that mission and it’s something we have been expecting to escalate anytime though the claim that Euros100,000 is missing sounds a bit too much,” said a senior official at the Foreign Affairs Ministry who wasn’t comfortable being quoted because he isn’t mandated to speak to the press.
THE PROBLEM;
Apparently trouble began when Alintuma, who has previously represented Uganda in Canada and other places, got complaints from some of the embassy staff and local Algerian service providers that they weren’t being paid. On investigation, he confirmed that indeed these two categories of people had missed payment since January 2018. “Some told him they had missed their remuneration since November last year,” said diplomatic sources both in Kampala and our Embassy in Algiers. Tushabe and Kamugendera being the officers concerned with financial matters, Alintuma summoned them asking why staffers weren’t being given their allowances and monthly salaries. “When he got answers that weren’t satisfactory, Alintuma wrote to the bankers freezing the Embassy accounts pending a special audit which he needed the input of his superiors in Kampala to commence,” a source explained. The two concerned officials have for all these months been saying there is no money because it hasn’t been released from Kampala yet in actual sense for them have been okay while their other colleagues at the embassy, including the Ambassador himself, have been deprived of their salary and allowances since January. “The members of the finance committee have been sitting and passing things that couldn’t be funded because the accounting officer’s standard response has been no money yet,” remarked a source. Alintuma had to confront the bank demanding an explanation as to why the Embassy finances weren’t being made available. It was then that he realized the problem was elderly Tushabe and his protégé Kamugendera who also doubles as the accountant for the embassy. When Alintuma raised a red flag, the two officials revenged by ensuring that employees working at his residence were totally starved of facilitation funds, allowances and salaries. His domestic employees at some point laid down their tools prompting the Ambassador to do his own laundry and cook his own meals. He these days also washes his own utensils and cleans his own compound because his domestic workers say they have volunteered enough since January. The same accounting officer Tushabe, who is retiring later this year on the account of age, was also recently cast in bad light when staffers from Accountant General’s office tried and failed to access accounting returns for the preceding period. Because of the financial squeeze at the embassy, created by the two powerful officials’ actions and omissions, many embassy staffers have already written to the concerned authorities giving the mandatory three months’ notice after which they intend to leave their positions protesting prolonged nonpayment of their allowances and salaries. Whereas Tushabe previously worked at the Ugandan missions in Abudabi and UK where he equally left a very controversial track record, Kamugendera previously worked in Fort Portal local government where he controversially lost his job prompting his brother who is a powerful PS in one of the juicy government ministries to lobby colleagues in government who got him a position in the Algiers Embassy after accountability-related stress in Kampala became too much on him. One of the two officials also has his own relative who, despite being improperly recruited, regularly earns her allowances and salary on time. Ironically those properly appointed have now gone for 6 months without pay. Watch this space! For comments, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755!
