Hoima Sugar factory workers stage accident, rob over Shs 200m from manager

By Arafat Nzito

Police in Hoima district has in custody two employees of Hoima Sugar Limited accused of staging an accident in which they robbed the company accountant shillings 239 million in cash.

This was revealed on Monday in a message by the Inspector General of Police. He congratulated a Joint Security task team for the successful operation which led to recovery of at least shillings 143 million from the suspects.

The suspects were behind the robbery of the shillings 239 million from a one Ganesh Suresh, an Indian national and top manager of the Albertine based sugar factory last week.

According to police, Ganesh had gone to withdraw the money as salary for the workers but his routine movement was closely monitored by some suspects who are also staff in the factory.

It is said that the suspects stage managed an accident using boda boda motorcycles at a place called Kabwoya.  When the driver jumped out of the car to check on the victims,  the suspects then robbed  three bags that contained cash.

“The Joint Task Teams responded quickly and recovered one bag with shillings 88 million and started tracking the suspects. We arrested arrested Ezra Katabalirwe and recovered shillings 54 million on him and also got two motorcycles number UAQ 327Y and UBA 423Q that were used in stage managing the incident,” reads part of the statement by IGP Okoth Ochola.

The two suspects in custody are Ezra Katabalirwe and a one Wakame. Efforts are underway to track down two others. The two on the run are Ronald Mujulizi and his brother yet to be identified.

These are believed to have disappeared with the outstanding cash of shillings 95 million.

Addressing the press in Kampala, spokesperson Fred Enanga pointed out that there was gross negligence on the part of the managers at Hoima Sugar limited which led to this robbery.

“You can not go to withdraw shillings 239 million in a Harrier with only the driver and manager yet you know that these movements can be monitored by criminals,” he said.

He hence encouraged companies to always seek services from security when transporting significant amounts of cash.

This followed a similar incident that happened in Jinja last week where the company accountant of Nile Plastic limited was also robbed of shillings 283 million in broad day light at Njeru.

In this incident, armed robbers also followed an Indian accountant as he was coming from Bank of Baroda in Jinja to pick workers' salaries.

He was ambushed along Njeru-Kayunga road and the suspects took off with cash.

Police managed to arrest two suspects who were found with only shillings 77 million out of 283 and a gun with 26 rounds of ammunition.