Shock as new ruthless boss fires entire parastatal staff over corruption in Uganda

The new Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) Executive Director Allen Kagina has left Ugandans in shock after she fired the entire staff of close to 2000 workers at the agency in her first major shakeup over massive corruption. In a memo sent to their mobile phones, Kagina thanks the staff, urging those interested to apply for their jobs afresh.

She told them the authority will soon embark on a recruitment drive of over 1736 new staff after restructuring.

Before being hired by UNRA six months ago, Kagina was the commissioner general at Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) where she discovered how much free money was in the mwananchi’s pocket and found ingenious ways of getting a large piece of it. The URA collections quadrupled during her 10-year tenure, from USh2 trillion in 2004 to USh8 trillion by 2014. This was one of the key reasons she was hired as the new broom to sweep the rot out of UNRA.

When you join an organisation your words would probably be similar to Kagina’s: “I want to spend the next month getting to know the staff, the road programme, the processes, gaps, challenges. I’m learning”. She is a quick study and soon discovered that money was gushing out of UNRA coffers like water from a burst pipe.

Having worked hard to collect those funds must have made her turn maroon with rage - she could not fathom this wanton wastage of government money. In June heads began to roll; when fish starts going bad, the first to rot is the head. Therefore, the first to fall under her axe were the human resource, procurement, finance and IT department heads.

These came under suspicion in the billion-dollar scandals that included creation of ghost roads, and payment of ghost property owners. There is a Kiswahili saying that when you see your neighbour being shaved, you should also wet your head and prepare yourself. The staff who had been celebrating the sacking of their bosses, were soon to find themselves in a similar predicament.

Counselling services

Kagina soon discovered that the rot had spread further and deeper like a malignant cancer and radical measures were required. On the last Monday of September, UNRA staff phones all began chirping at he same time – it was not an alert from the bank signaling a salary deposit. It was a notice of dismissal.

Kagina had decided that everyone was tarred by the same brush and asked the board to allow her purge UNRA of incompetent corrupt staff. She was very gracious in the termination memo which read in part, “On behalf of the board, I thank all staff for the efforts expended from 2008 till now and wish you all the best in the new life to come. Arrangements are being made to provide counselling services to all those who may need them.”

There shall be no forthcoming benefits or lawsuits as the fine print in the UNRA Act allows the board to dismiss all employees. The staff who were fired were told to reapply for their jobs. It would appear the bloated payroll is adequate for double the headcount.

As we excitedly discussed the details there were those who were secretly celebrating – that ex who worked at UNRA is now jobless. There are those who are mourning having coughed up some cash for an opportunity to ride on the gravy train.

Congrats Kagina – when you are done with UNRA, perhaps you can do something about the railway. Now that Kenyans have been complaining about corruption, perhaps you need a Kagina of sorts in those corrupt Government ministries, departments and parastatals?