By Mulengera Reporters
In order to ensure everything works out well, President Museveni recently indicated to those concerned that it was his desire to have total overhaul in the teams running the show at the revamped Uganda Airlines Company.
Deeply knowledgeable sources say that is how he insisted that the entire Cabinet gets involved to help embolden line Minister Monica Azuba to effect all the necessary hard decisions to accelerate the desired results from the Uganda Airlines project. “He wanted to ensure that people who get hurt because of the changes don’t gang up on the Works Minister and that’s why he opted for deepened involvement of cabinet,” says a source close to the process.
In fact sources say the first list of board members that was submitted by the Works Ministry was rejected in its entirety. The Works Ministry proposal was 100% retention of the members comprising the old taskforce from which the new Board (headed by Pereza Ahabwe) will be taking over.
That idea of allowing the old team to run the show up to when the entire Uganda Airlines Company structure is in place was rejected after the President expressed himself very strongly saying much as there are things they had done right, there is a lot that went wrong. To him, this necessitated total overhaul at both Board and management levels. It’s also said the big man, acting on credible intelligence reports, wasn’t exactly comfortable with sensitive government secrets being safe in the hands of some members of the old team.
“The truth is lots of the communications by some of those people and top management have been subjected to lots of electronic interceptions and in the process their loyalty has been assessed and found to be wanting,” says a source. It’s revealed that those favoring the old team had pleaded that at least half of them stay and half of the (7) Board positions go to new people.
But this didn’t work as Cabinet rejected the proposed list twice forcing line Minister Aggrey Bagiire back on the drawing board. The rejection was preceded with very exhaustive discussions. “At the President’s prompting, there was unusually a lot of debate on the board composition and ministers had open debate on each of the names. That is how the final 7 were agreed upon out of the 37 that had come through the nominations,” said a source adding that some people on being told they are on the (1st & 2nd) list had even thrown parties to celebrate their achievement only for things to change later on.
BAGENDA’S FATE
Mulengera News has impeccably established that to ensure total overhaul, a political decision has already been taken at the very highest level of decision-making to ensure that current Chief Executive Ephraim Bagenda doesn’t remain Company CEO for a very long time. He must be replaced because the system isn’t exactly sure he is possessed with adequate levels of loyalty required for one to serve in such a sensitive position.
“It will be up to him to either accept a demotion, having to serve under someone else as CEO and he accepts some other subordinate role or entirely leave the company. The new Board will soon be directed to prioritize recruiting a fresh CEO to be its top priority on its list of things to do,” said a source close to H.E Museveni. “Already there are a number of potential recruits being critically looked at and these are mostly high-performing Ugandans holding stronger aviation positions in Europe, Middle East, North America and Canada.”
Some described Bagenda as a CEO who is increasingly becoming fatigued because of the many complicated processes he has already participated in all aimed at revamping the national airline. Multiple sources revealed that the guidance the new Board has from the highest levels of political authority in this country is to ensure the new CEO coming after Bagenda must be an extremely competent Ugandan-and that will be the guiding principle as different CEO resumes continue to be scrutinized as the head-hunting intensifies to shop for the most appropriate personality. (For comments, call, text or whatsapp us on 0703164755 or email us at mulengera2040@gmail.com).
