Nakawa West MP who also doubles as the chairperson of COSASE , Joel Ssenyonyi, has blasted Speaker Anita Among for taking too long to act on their report regarding the probe on Uganda Airlines.
Ssenyonyi said many people have been asking him of what happened to the Uganda Airlines report which was submitted to the speaker in September 2022.
“We submitted the report to the Speaker and the Clerk so that we could table it on the floor of Parliament. All this while, Speaker Anita Among has been saying she is studying the report, and that she will give feedback,” he said.
“I saw the energy used to censure Francis Zaake and now Hon Persis Namuganza over what are largely personal issues. I wish the same energy could be applied to executing Parliament work such as committee reports.”
The legislator who also served as the opposition National Unity Platform spokesperson said nothing will stop them from carrying on their duties in exposing the rot in government entities.
“We shall not be deflated in our quest to do our work as we expose the rot in the government entities, whether the reports are eventually tabled or not. In this new year 2023, we are taking the exposure to a whole new level,” he said.
In July last year, COSASE started probing the operations of Uganda Airlines following red flags raised by the Auditor General.
The committee concluded its probe in September but Parliament was sent on a month-long recess before it could present its report.
However, the report was leaked before it could be tabled before the House.
The report spotlighted operations of the national carrier dogged by scandals since the company was incorporated in 2018.
The airline has had two chief executive officers and two boards of directors since its inception and the last board was sent packing early 2021 to pave way for an investigation into corruption and flawed procurement deals.
During the probe, Uganda Airline’s Chief Executive Officer, Jennifer Bamuturaki was in the spotlight over corruption and financial loss of billions of shillings at the airlines under her management.
The COSASE report recommended that the current and past executives of Uganda Airlines should be punished for mismanagement and flouting procurement regulations.
It also recommended that the current CEO, Jennifer Bamuturaki should refund Shs 156 million paid to online bloggers to burnish her reputation and that of the national carrier during a recent storm of bad publicity.
The committee highlighted several flawed procurements for which it recommended officials past and present to be reprimanded.
The committee also wanted further investigations into an alleged internal racket of phoney ticketing after MPs discovered 908 passengers with tickets worth Shs982 million which were missing from the reported revenues.
