By Andante Okanya

THE Court of Appeal has been asked to dismiss the appeal of the National Forestry Authority (NFA) over failure to comply with a court order.

An appeal was lodged in the court by NFA after Justice Joseph Murangira awarded sh3.2b to a construction company, Beachside Development Services, as damages for breach of contract.

NFA’s bank accounts in the Bank of Uganda and Stanbic Bank had also been attached and frozen. Beach Development, a company in which the former presidential legal adviser, Fox Odoi, has a stake, claims to have carried out development at a beach in a protected forest reserve in Kitubulu, near Entebbe town, about five years ago.

A panel of judges, led by George Engwau, on December 9, ordered NFA to deposit a bank guarantee of sh3.2b as condition for temporarily lifting a lower court directive. The other judges were Steven Kavuma and Amos Twinomujuni.

The forestry body was given 45 days to deposit the bank guarantee with the court’s registrar. However, NFA did not comply with the court order.

Enock Barata, the lawyer representing the company, told the judges that there are enough grounds to have the appeal dismissed with costs.

He said NFA acted in bad faith by failing to appear for conferencing on February 8, even after an order was in place.
In January, the Inspector General of Government ordered NFA to stop the payment of the sh3.2b until it had completed investigations into the matter.