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Jitters as Energy ministry, PAU start restructuring
Electricity lines in Kampala. Several departments and directorates in the Energy ministry are expected to be merged in the restructuring process. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- The new macro structure of the ministry now has the office of the permanent secretary, six divisions and seven departments.
Emotions ran high during a management meeting on Monday at Amber House, seat of the Ministry of Energy, as news of restructuring was announced.
The restructuring, which includes phasing out directorates and squeezing them into departments, takes effect in July next year.
The exercise is part of the ongoing piloting of merger, mainstreaming and rationalising government agencies and commissions, which started with taking the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) back to Amber House as a department.
The new macro structure of the ministry now has the Office of the Permanent Secretary, six divisions, including legal, internal audit, health safety and environment, monitoring, and evaluation.
It also has seven departments namely; energy resources, electrical power, nuclear energy, geological survey and mines, petroleum, finance and administration, and rural electrification, which was first created 21 years ago as a semi-autonomous agency to drive government’s electrification drive.
Jitters abound in the corridors of Amber House about moving staff, demoting staff, and who to promote to head which department and the smaller units.
The ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Ms Irene Batebe, was not readily available for comment on the matter last evening.
Cabinet resolved to maintain five statutory bodies, Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU), Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) to manage the country’s commercial interests in the nascent oil sector, Electricity Regulatory Authority as regulator of the power sub-sector, Atomic Energy Council, and Uganda Energy Company Ltd, under which UEGCL, UEDCL, and UETCL will be run.
In a related development, staff affected by a separate restructuring exercise at PAU, the oil sector regulator, have petitioned Energy minister Ruth Nankabirwa to intervene.
The restructuring, which was approved by the authority’s board last week on recommendation by the consultancy Steadman Global Ltd, seeks to disband the Directorate of ICT and Data Management.
Its functions will then be merged under finance to form the Directorate of Finance, ICT and Administration, and the data management sucked up under the Directorate of Exploration.
“The recommendation of the HR consultant to dissolve the Directorate of ICT and Data Management has not recognised the importance of ICT and data management in the global oil and gas industry, that is used a digital oil fields for increased production efficiency and use in, among others, seismic acquisition and processing, geological and reservoir modeling, and seismic data processing,” the petition reads in part.
In a statement to this newspaper last evening, PAU said the restructuring is a common exercise among corporate companies and all core functions relating to oil have been spread out to other departments where they will be ably managed.
“Like in any restructuring process, the proposed changes have affected several existing positions, and recommended some new positions. The recommendations will be implemented in a phased manner, to ensure continuity of the operations of the authority, and enable affected staff to transition effectively,” Ms Gloria Sebikari, PAU’s manager for corporate affairs and public relations, told Monitor in an email.
Ms Sebikari said the HR audit by the consultancy was aimed at realigning the authority’s strategic plan and the current industry needs following the announcement of the Final Investment Decision in February.
More changes
Cabinet in June approved the abolition of all directorates and their heads—directors in the Energy ministry.
These will be replaced by technical departments to be headed by assistant commissioners, while the Under Secretary will head the finance and administration department, under which the offices of general administration, accounts, procurement, human resource management, and policy planning, shall be supervised.
The new streamlining specifically affects the Directorate of Finance and Administration, Directorate of Geological, Surveys and Mines(DGSM), Directorate of Petroleum, and the Directorate of Energy Resources and Development.
The DGSM, based in Entebbe, and which is charged with Uganda’s long neglected mining subsector, is now a department perforated into three divisions of geological survey, mines, and geothermal resources, respectively.
The Directorate of Petroleum, which previously offered policy oversight on oil activities, is now the Department of Petroleum with three division of upstream (oil exploration and production), midstream (refinery and pipelines), and downstream (petrol stations and related supply chains), respectively.
