By Otim Nape
Ismail Ddamba is a Lord Councilor representing Rubaga III at the Kampala City Council Authority (KCCA) and in this interview, he discloses dirty secrets and the rot at City Hall which he says the top technocratic officials don’t want voters and the general public to know. Ddamba, a renowned rubble rouser, says the situation has become so helpless that the only solution is for Parliament to institute an inquiry into what has gone wrong at City Hall whose officials are mandated with planning for and developing Uganda’s capital city Kampala.
Below are the excerpts:
QN: We understand you are unhappy and are leading other councilors to petition Parliament calling for a legislative inquiry into what you call rot at KCCA. What exactly is the problem?
ANS: We are rightly angry that Authority meetings aren’t taking place having been stopped by Kampala Minister Beti Kamya through her letter. You know she doesn’t understand the law yet my boss the Lord Mayor is a rule of law general. She says in her letter that the so-called resumed meetings are illegal and alien to the law and the Constitution. She forgets that the rules of procedure provide for such resumed meetings whereby we can convene to complete a matter left pending in the previous meeting. But we said okay since she doesn’t know the law well, let’s do it the way she wants and understands.
QN: But still no meetings; you haven’t been meeting. Is it still Kamya to blame?
ANS: No meetings still and it’s bad because it disempowers us and without meeting, there is no council. No Authority because that is the mandate of the Lord Mayor and all of us the other elected leaders. We execute our mandate, including oversight and planning for the city, through meetings which can’t sit. We last sat in January and this is what happened. We were in a meeting with all the technical people in attendance when Beti Kamya’s letter was introduced to us and discussion on it started. The technical wing members, as if they feared the meetings, immediately said we are leaving since the Minister’s letter says we stop these meetings. We were not okay with this. We told them we must discuss this letter and in any case it can’t begin working today. It applies for the next sittings. They refused and as they stormed out of the meetings, my fellow Lord Councilors Nasasira Happy and Faridah Nakabugo locked the door saying ‘you guys aren’t going anywhere.’ The technical wing said ‘this shows we aren’t safe and won’t be attending your meetings anymore.’ We said no way and that is how the meeting ended in total chaos. The ED [Jennifer Musisi], who is rarely at city hall these days as if she is tired of serving, supported their acts and said no more meetings.
QN: Why have you not proceeded without them? Must they be there?
ANS: Yes very much so because the law requires that there must be a minute secretary for all Authority meetings and the secretary must come from the technical wing. That’s the law. So the ED says I won’t be sending the secretary for the meetings and that is why we haven’t met since January.
So clearly it’s the sabotage of the technical people that is the reason why we haven’t met even when we are ready to proceed in the way Beti Kamya recommended. Now I’m fearful they are looking for a way to create a scenario similar to what they used to remove the Lord Mayor last time. They said he hadn’t called meetings and was therefore incompetent yet it was their problem. The law says the Lord Mayor must call at least one meeting in 6 months and after 6 months of no meeting, the Lord Mayor can legally be in trouble which is what they want to discredit him again. The technical wing is complicit in this conspiracy against the Lord Mayor and the entire political wing.
QN: Why would they do that? What gain is it for them?
ANS: First of all the ED Musisi is personally fed up and is rarely there. She comes briefly signs documents and doesn’t stay for long. She leaves shortly after. But most importantly what they are very much afraid of is the 7 issue petition that councilors led by Councilor Kawalya [of Rubaga North] raised. Basing on that petition, the different committees were tasked to go and investigate the grievances therein and many of those grievances were from the disgruntled employees of the technical wing. The committees have their reports ready and they are supposed to report back to the Authority and I tell you my brother the findings in these reports are shocking. So the technical wing is buying time and fearing to be confronted with these reports because as people’s representatives, we shall be raising the hard questions and some people might even be prosecuted.
QN: So what are the issues in the Kawalya petition?
ANS: In brief, they include the following. One is the technical wing not implementing council decisions and those of the minister. We have directed them on many things but nothing ever gets implemented yet we have this power in the law. The example is of the vendors; we directed them to gazette busy roads or streets where they can operate on the agreed days and time. They haven’t done that. We want a follow up report from them. The minister directed them regarding salary increment and they didn’t act. So we are saying if it’s not the Minister’s and not Council resolutions, then whose orders are you implementing? They must tell us. We are ready to requisition for a council meeting as councilors and we have the numbers but still the Lord Mayor can’t call the meeting because of lack of the minute secretary who must be designated by the ED.
QN: You said 7 areas. What else are you demanding in the Kawalya petition?
ANS: There is something on Kampala City Festival and we are asking what is the source of funding and how much are you given by these different corporate entities? We want some accountability on that and it’s within our powers. There are HR issues at KCCA whereby every Director recruits the way he/she wants. How do you expel people anyhow? These are things that have been reported to us by aggrieved staffers in the technical wing saying ‘please help us.’ They want clarity and they are tired of being on so and so’s mercy [Councilor Doreen Sabuka of Makindye West who chairs the HR Committee of the Authority agrees with Ddamba on this issue. She says her committee report is ready and they want an explanation as to why KCCA recruits through head hunting always as opposed to open recruitment whereby people compete for the available job opportunities-editor]. [Ddamba continues] In the HR area there are lots of discrepancies for example Peter Kauju is Robert Kalumba’s senior but gets more salary than his boss. Kalumba gets Shs12m per month yet Kauju is at 10m. We have directorates where diploma holders are the bosses supervising people with degrees. All this abuse is because things aren’t well streamlined. The Director HRM Mr. Richard Lule is powerless as we saw on the issue of Kituuma Rusoke. He heads enforcement and Lule can’t explain how he came to be KCCA staff yet he is said to be here on secondment from the Uganda Police. Lule said he isn’t under me and we asked Director legal how did this man come here? The legal director said ask the ED and she denies us audience. We are concerned the man earns our salary yet he isn’t supposed to be a KCCA employee. He earns over Shs15m as if he is a Director at KCCA. Our dilemma is we can talk about these things but we don’t have power to expel such people. We can only petition the President which isn’t easy as you know. Many employees have no contract and are serving just on the ED’s mercy. A lot of things went wrong during the vacuum created by the absence of the Lord Mayor and we want them rectified in our petition.
QN: You said things are so bad and there are issues in all the Directorates at KCCA. Now what exactly do you have against the Legal department for example?
ANS: Ha that one is even worse and it’s partly the reason the KCCA is very broke and our coffers are in red. We are losing many cases and thereby lose billions. This wouldn’t be happening if that department was functioning properly. Our petition wants an audit on that department. There are issues on property rates. The law says that money realized from those rates should be invested back in the community services for those paying the rates to benefit. We are asking why can’t legal advise the ED when the same people paying property rates are being coerced to pay for garbage collection, drainage maintenance and waste management in their localities. There are contracts with big problems and we wonder where the legal and audit departments have been to guide the ED to save the tax payers’ money. Take the example of Kitebi P/S in my Rubaga Division. There was a contract in which each desk cost KCCA Shs1.45m and we feel this clearly was inflated. We want answers and the technical wing thinks the solution lies in avoiding Authority meetings. There is Weraga road which connects Ndeeba to Zana. The contract required installation of street lights but the contractor had omitted that item. Gratefully when our petition came out, they panicked and put it right. The street lights were put up which is good for our electorate. We have questions on the money going into road signs because in some cases they aren’t put up at all or where they are put, the spellings are wrong and they look messy. We have Kiswa P/S in Nakawa Division where the contractor was allowed to charge KCCA Shs200m per class room constructed and we are saying this should be looked into. Why do you charge per class room as opposed to the conventional way of charging one lump sum figure for the entire job? They may say we are ignorant but all we are saying is that please lets have the meetings so that we get enlightened.
QN: You represent Ndeeba and we have been hearing queries being raised about the Ndeeba market that KCCA improperly demolished for the botched railway project and lost Shs32bn in the resultant court case that was commenced by councilor James Sekidde and others. Is this something you have picked interested in as area councilor?
ANS: Oh yes we want all these audited. We sent it to the committees of legal and audit to investigate it jointly and there is a report to that effect and the findings are very shocking. We interacted with Micheal Okuo [former Director Legal] and he said his advice was ignored by the ED and former Minister Tumwebaze. He says he advised before the demolition that KCCA would get into problems because the market wasn’t ours as KCCA. Okuo says he wrote letters advising the ED through the Director Physical Infrastructure but he was ignored by ED and the Minister. Okuo says the guys went to court and won the case against KCCA yet this would have been avoided if his advice had been accepted. The Director Physical Planning Moses Atwine is also pinning the ED. He showed us letters which he wrote advising against the demolition but the ED and Minister ignored him. In fact that is how his [Okuo] problems began [Okuo no longer works with KCCA-editor]. Now KCCA must pay them Shs32bn which court awarded them but as Councilors we have information many of these cases are actually for insiders in KCCA who deliberately make mistakes and use these very aggrieved vendors to sue KCCA and g
et the money on their behalf. This is why we want an open investigations process by a parliamentary committee so that these officials who stand accused of connivance have the opportunity to come and defend themselves. These very insiders have advised such claimants to forcefully access KCCA money after winning in court through garnishee orders and as we talk there is nothing on the KCCA accounts because such orders are very many and whatever is deposited there, is immediately taken by creditors who we think are proxies of some people at City Hall. The ED was forced to resort to using URA accounts to prevent our money as KCCA being finished off by such claimants using garnishee orders. Now is that lawful to use URA? That is why we want an open inquiry so that all these questions are answered rather than trying to hide our heads in sand as if all is well. Okuo and Atwine even advised that we talk to these Ndeeba vendors and settle out of court which is cheaper but their advice was ignored. Okuo also advised that you can’t demolish that market without giving vendors a notice and absence of this notice only made our case even harder before the judge as KCCA. We have summoned the ED to come and shed light before us as a committee but she has defied all our invitations. We think its Parliament that has the power to compel such offices to appear or else they face consequences. That is the reason we are calling for a Parliamentary inquiry. Where on earth do you run a big entity like KCCA employing so many people without having a proper HR Disciplinary Committee and you end up chasing people arbitrarily as if they aren’t Ugandans? [However, Doreen Sabuka who chairs the HR Committee, in a phone interview, disagreed with Ddamba on this. She says a disciplinary committee exists and the only problem is hiring people without open competition-editor]. [Ddamba continues] We need total overhaul at KCCA because all the Directors are failing to do their work except Mr. Bwire who is Director Audit. He has done his work well and if all the other Directorates were as efficient, KCCA would be very far in matters of service delivery. For comments, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755!
