Woman seeks to get Otafiire’s earnings

Feb 02, 2004

MS Allen Atukunda, a primary teacher, has asked the Uganda Human Rights Commission for an order to attach the earnings of Col. Kahinda Otafiire to cater for her two of their children,

MS Allen Atukunda, a primary teacher, has asked the Uganda Human Rights Commission for an order to attach the earnings of Col. Kahinda Otafiire to cater for her two of their children, reports Solomon Muyita.

Atukunda, 30, a teacher at Wagawaga Primary School in Mbarara, told the Commission tribunal she had an affair with Otafiire, water, lands and environment minister, since 1997, till 2001 when the latter denied paternity of the children.

“I first took the matter to FIDA and I was advised to go for a DNA test. The results indicated that Otafiire is 99.99% the biological father of my children,” she told Commissioner Mariam Fauzat Wangadya presiding over the matter.

She said their affair had been on and off since her first pregnancy that bore six-year-old Sharan and Elshadai aged two. She came in company of Sharan for the hearing where neither Otafiire nor his lawyer, Julius Kiirya, showed up.

“After my second child, he rang me and told me not to tell him anything to do with children. That’s when he started mistreating me with the children, dodging us all the time. Getting school fees from him has always been a long struggle,” she said.

Yesterday’s hearing was in public, after Otafiire failed to honour an agreement he entered with Atukunda on January 13, when Kiirya applied for the case to be heard in camera. Otafiire undertook to provide the children all the necessary maintenance including clothing, medical care, shelter, food and education, by sending a monthly sum of sh150,000. Atukunda, whose testimony was led by the commission advocate Cissy Kagaba, told the tribunal that Otafiire breached the agreement when he failed to pay sh900,000 to her to cover six months.
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