UPDF soldier waits 24 years for his pension

Kampala.

The National Resistance Army (NRA) walkie-talkie crackled at 10pm. Then 19-year-old Edirisa Kamoga, an army signaller, received it.

NRA’s 3rd Division headquarters in Mbale wanted to know how the soldiers in Pabbo in Amuru District, about 375 kilometres north of Kampala, were faring.
Just then, gunshots reverberated in the air in Pabbo. Mr Kamoga believes the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels fired the shots since it happened during the insurgency, in 1991 to be specific.

An NRA soldier responded with a rocket propelled grenade (RPG), which brushed the radio call aerial Mr Kamoga had looped on a tree.
It sparked and triggered an electric current, which flowed to the receiver Mr Kamoga was holding to his ear. He blacked out.

“I regained consciousness in Lacor hospital [in Gulu District],” he says.
In 1992, the NRA discharged him from the army. The army said it was reducing numbers, which some of Uganda’s development partners had recommended to reduce the wage bill.

Thirty–six per cent of the soldiers the NRA discharged between 1992 and 1995 were on account of reduction in numbers.

With the promulgation of Uganda’s Constitution in 1995, the NRA was renamed the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF). The UPDF Act, 2005 entitles officers or militants discharged on such grounds to a monthly pension.

However, 24 years since the army demobilised Mr Kamoga, the government has allegedly never given him even one month’s pension. At the time he left the army, his monthly salary was Shs134,000. According to Section 13 of Uganda’s Pensions Act, one’s pension should not exceed three quarters of their emoluments.

“They [army officials] keep telling me I will be attended to the following month. They even tell me to make sure I maintain the minimum balance on my bank account so that my account, to which they will send the money, is not closed.

But when I check on the account, I find only the minimum balance I put there. Months have turned into years and I have not received even a cent and yet I was a soldier. I became ill during the Bush War. I know of soldiers who were not even injured but who have since been paid their dues,” Mr Kamoga says.
And it is affecting him. His landlady in Bombo, about 37km north of Kampala, has now kicked him out of the tenement he was renting. He owes her Shs320,000 for eight months rent.

Mr Kamoga, his wife Aisha Nanyonga, 34, and two children, have for a month now been sleeping in the lawns and the waiting areas of Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala.

“It is cold at night. Our children cough a lot as a result. Many times, we are told [by the hospital’s guards] to leave this place. But we have no where else to go. I cannot go back to my mother’s home; she is taking care of our two elder children in Kyaggwe, Mukono. Our household items are in the tenement we were renting in Bombo,” Ms Nanyonga says.

“I request those concerned to help my husband to get paid so that we, too, can live a decent life. My husband fought to bring the National Resistance Movement into power,” Ms Nanyonga adds.

The UPDF spokesperson, Col Paddy Ankunda, said if Mr Kamoga has not been paid since he was discharged, there could be a problem. He advised him to bring the matter to the attention of UPDF’s Directorate of Pensions and Gratuity for investigation and solution.

“He should bring the matter to the attention of UPDF’s Directorate of Pensions and Gratuity for investigation and solution. Running to the media won’t help him; the media will not pay [the arrears],” Col Paddy Ankunda, UPDF spokesperson.

But Mr Kamoga says he has done that time and again and still, his problem has not been solved.
“Running to the media won’t help him; the media will not pay [the arrears],” Col Ankunda said. “The army owes about 30,000 veterans’ arrears,” he adds.
In December 2015, while campaigning for reelection, President Museveni said at a press conference in Jinja Municipality that the bill for the veterans was Shs1.5 trillion.

Of that, he said the government had so far paid Shs1 trillion ($294 million). The President did not say when the balance of Shs500 billion would be cleared.
Mr Museveni was responding to former army commander and Forum for Democratic Change president, Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu, who said many former soldiers have not yet been paid their dues, including himself.
Mr Kamoga, who now and then bleeds from the ears and mouth, says he needs his money to buy drugs.

According to a Chieftaincy of Medical Services internal memo, Mr Kamoga suffered head injuries during the insurgency.
Since then, he has been in and out of hospitals such as Bombo Military Hospital, Mbuya, Mulago, and the Aga Khan Hospital in Kenya.
In May, health workers in Bombo wheeled him to Butabika Mental Hospital in Kampala. After a night in the facility, Mr Kamoga left; returning to Mulago hospital.

“Some people in the army want me certified insane so that I do not claim my money,” he says.
He later went back to Butabika for review since an army doctor had recommended so.
According to a June 15 Butabika medical form, Mr Kamoga is “mentally calm and cooperative”.
Butabika though referred him to an ear, nose and throat specialist.
However, Mr Kamoga says he will not see the specialist he was referred to, claiming he is part of the team of officers who want to deny him his pension.
“I cannot return to Bombo; if they could send me to Butabika, this time they could inject me with something that might kill me,” he says.

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