KCCA staff, management in row over deployment

Employees who recently joined Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) after they had been denied placement for seven years are currently in row with the institution’s management over their alleged lying to court and KCCA, Daily Monitor has learnt.
In 2012, KCCA through the Public Service Commission advertised jobs seeking qualified Ugandans to work at the then newly created Authority.

Although 280 candidates passed the interviews, KCCA gave placements to only 45 candidates.
KCCA said it did not have money to absorb all the successful candidates at that time but promised to call them later after securing more funds.

Candidates drag KCCA to court
However, 11 candidates of those who were left out dragged KCCA to court seeking deployment, arguing that they were jobless since they had resigned from their previous jobs to join the agency.
They also requested court that they be paid arrears for the seven years they were not deployed at KCCA, damages and legal costs.
On February 28, the applicants entered a consent with KCCA which included deployment, payment of their legal costs and also pay 10 per cent of their arrears.

KCCA through their director of legal affairs, Mr Charles Ouma, requested that the damages be dropped, something the applicants allegedly agreed to. The applicants commenced work at KCCA in March.
When KCCA allegedly failed to pay the applicants’ 10 per cent arrears of about Shs2.5b as per the consent agreement, the latter through their lawyers garnished the former’s bank accounts and got the money.
However, when KCCA carried out investigations, they realised that the 11 employees who had sued them, were actually employed contrary to their earlier revelations to court.

KCCA now wants court to quash the earlier consent judgment.
According to a report from KCCA’s criminal investigations department dated May 15, 2019 a copy which this newspaper has seen, nine out of the 11 employees were previously employed.
On May 21, KCCA’s acting executive director Andrew Kitaka swore an affidavit, saying the initial consent judgment to deploy and compensate the 11 employees be quashed since they had lied to both KCCA and court.

Employees, who claimed anonymity, said KCCA top bosses are ‘witch-hunting’ them for garnishing the institution’s bank accounts. But this newspaper could not independently verify this claim.
“We genuinely got the jobs through Public Service but we were not deployed. Even after we entered a consent judgment, we are still being witch-hunted and this is affecting us psychologically. They are now claiming that the former director of legal affairs, Mr Ouma signed the consent judgment without management’s approval which we think is so ridiculous. Their aim is to kick us out of KCCA,” one of the aggrieved employees said.
KCCA’s spokesperson Peter Kaujju said he could not discuss internal matters of the institution with third parties.

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