Chaired by Dr. Emily Kugonza, who subsequently became an MP, the governing Board of Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) on 26th August 2018 arbitrarily terminated the services of Executive Director Jolly Kaguhangire.
The lady, who previously had excelled holding top management positions at URA for more than 20 years and had even given favorable appraisal by the UIA board of up to 80.3%, was all of a sudden humiliatingly forced out of the UIA office barely after doing one and half years into her 5-year employment contract as ED, which had commenced on 1st April 2017.
Upon being interdicted, she was subjected to investigations by a committee the Board put in place in a manner that the Industrial Court has since established to have been improper, malicious, biased and unlawful. Based on the Committee investigations report, she was terminated and asked to permanently vacate UIA offices.
Farsighted as always, the President tried to intervene calling for sanity but he was disregarded by Board members and Finance Ministry officials who were determined to get rid of Kaguhangire because they found her complicated and hard to compromise.
On taking office, Kaguhangire sought to make UIA a more efficient agency of government and commenced a restructuring exercise to ensure staff were appropriately deployed. As can be expected, many staffers didn’t like this. They revolted by petitioning the IGG falsely accusing their ED of all sorts of things. The IGG subsequently cleared her of all the allegations which the disgruntled staff had levelled against her.
The fight against her didn’t stop largely because there are bosses at the Finance Ministry and inside the UIA Board who were determined to get rid of Kaguhangire no matter how clean and corruption-free she was. They went on a fishing expedition of some sort and used the investigations Board committee to come up with fictitious and ambiguous impropriety claims against her. These were used to mount a very damaging media campaign all aimed at soiling her before the President.
Unsubstantiated claims were made against her and put in the investigations committee report, which became the basis for her termination as ED.
Briefly these were the allegations on which her summary and subsequently unlawful dismissal was based: abuse of office, insubordination, defying the Minister’s guidance on UIA’s 5-year strategic plan, concealing some UIA-related information from the Board and closing the UIA Namanve office without Board authorization.
Kaguhangire, who endured plenty of negative media publicity that was being spearheaded by her superiors in order to demonize her before the public and make it hard for the President to publicly defend or associate with her, was aged 51 years as of that time.
She protested her maltreatment and improper dismissal by filing a case at the Industrial Court whose Linda Lillian Tusiime Mugisha, John Abraham Bwire, Julian Nyachwo and Juma Mwamula on Wednesday 11th June proclaimed a 41-page judgment declaring her dismissal unlawful, procedurally and substantively unlawful. Having rejected everything UIA’s lawyer Franklin Uwizera (from the AG chambers) submitted, the Industrial Court Justices only fell short of ordering Kaguhangire’s re-instatement at UIA.
The Justices found that the Board relied on the Public Service Standing Orders to come up with kangaroo investigations in order to fix Ms Kaguhangire yet the UIA’s Investment Code Act and the HR Manual is what should primarily have applied because it’s the one on which her 5-year employment contract was rooted. Investigations by the Court established that the relevant provisions of the Employment Act were disregarded and violated as the UIA Board members fidgeted to fix Kamugira.
Court also established that her Constitutional rights under Article 28, which makes it mandatory for her or any other similarly-placed employee to have been given a fair hearing, were fatally violated. That after receiving the investigations Committee report, the Board ought to have commenced a disciplinary process to accord Kaguhangire a proper opportunity to defend herself against the allegations that had been put up against her. This wasn’t done. The Board merely relied on the investigations report to declare her guilty and proceeded to terminate her.
The legal provisions, which make it mandatory for her to be heard and be given a three months’ notice, were all disregarded and this is something over which Court agreed with her lawyer Paul Kutesa and generously awarded Kaguhangire generous damages.
The awarded damages, totaling to approximately Shs600m, took note of the fact that Kaguhangire’s reputation was so much damaged by her pursuers, using both the print and social online media, to the extent that her future employability was deliberately and significantly diminished yet no wrongdoing was ever satisfactorily established or proved against her.
The awarded damages, attracting interest of 15% per annum for as long as they remain unpaid, were particularized by the Industrial Court as follows: Shs52.9m as payment in lieu of notice, Shs280m as general damages, Shs35m as aggravated damages and Shs17.9m as severance pay.
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