By The Insight Post-Uganda
The Leader of Opposition in Parliament Mathias Mpuuga Nsamba has directed the Mukono District Speaker together with her council to indict the LCV chairperson Rev. Peter Bakaluba Mukasa for failure to constitute the District Service Commission.
Mpuuga who is currently on an oversight tour in districts of Greater Mukono was responding to queries raised by Mukono Municipality Member of Parliament Betty Nambooze that the district chairperson is giving priority to his interests against public wants.
For the past two years, the district has been operating without a District Service Commission, a crucial body responsible for appointing and promoting civil servants.
Nambooze told the Leader of the Opposition that the district is facing serious employment gaps in both the district and the municipality.
According to Nambooze, the two local governments cannot benefit from the road funds lately allocated to districts and municipalities since none of them has fully constituted public service structures requiring certified engineers.
The current Engineers for entities are in an acting capacity, yet several other sectors such as hospitals, schools, and administration also lack workers because some of them died due to COVID-19, a few were interdicted and others clocked retirement age.
The district returns a sum of 1.2 billion Shillings which was allocated for staff recruitment to the consolidated funds due to the lack of a service commission.
Mpuuga agreed with Nambooze and said that regardless of any disagreement at hand, the chairperson should learn to separate public duty from self-interest. He pledges to support the district where legal needs arise.
But also, as the Deputy Principal for the National Unity Platform in Charge of the Buganda Region, he has pledged to summon him for mismanagement of the district.
Once the district chairperson is indicted and later found guilty of any charges of incompetence against him, the council can as well go ahead and vote him out of office.
The chairperson is not in the office and has not answered our telephone calls to respond to the concerns at hand.
However, Stephen Gganzi, the Secretary for Production at the District who represented him at the LOP’s oversight tour revealed that he failed to get a boat from Koome Islands where he had gone to supervise service delivery and therefore failed to return on time.
The District Chief Administrative Officer, Elizabeth Namanda notes that he advised the chairperson on what to do and he is undertaking a guided direction about the issues of the service commission.
Mpuuga is not the first to instruct Bakaluba to constitute the District Service Commission. On January 19, 2023, Winnie Agnes Kabogoza Musoke, the Public Service Commission Chairperson wrote instructing Bakaluba and Mukono district councils to adhere to the procedure of constituting the District Service Commission to avoid unnecessary costly court cases for the government.
This happened after the Mukono district council approved and sent the names of four nominees to the Public Service Commission for approval in May last year, ignoring Stella Margret Kiondo, the former chairperson who had been elected as the representative of the urban council executive.
In February this year, the Local Government Minister, Raphael Magyezi also directed him to constitute the service commission within a month or as guided by the Public Service Commission or face sanctions.
However, Bakaluba informed the council that Kiondo needed further scrutiny following the several petitions of corruption and bribery filed against her by residents who once applied for jobs in the district.
He asked the council to consider Dr Godfrey Kibuuka Kisuule as the new chairperson, saying there was no need to waste time on people with tainted names, yet the district has several people of integrity.
He also recommended Sarah Katumba, a former midwife as a member, to have the commission fully constituted.
In May this year, a resident of Mukono District named Samuel Busulwa filed a lawsuit against the Public Service Commission for rejecting the appointment of Dr Godfrey Kibuuka and Sarah Katumba as members of the commission.
Busulwa, represented by his lawyer Kenneth Nsubuga, filed a petition at the High Court in Mukono, seeking an order to nullify the Public Service Commission’s decision to reject Godfrey Kibuuka Kisuule and Sarah Katumba as chairperson and member, respectively. However, the hearing of the case is pending.
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