UCC defies court order halting staff sackings

The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) has said it cannot implement a court order halting the sacking of 21 staff, among them top managers, saying the applicants' contracts had already elapsed.

The employees, whose contracts ended on January 31, were sacked following a restructuring exercise carried out by a consultancy firm, Deloitte and Touche, prompting them to seek court redress.

Through the Centre for Legal Aid led by lawyer Isaac Ssemakadde, one of the affected UCC employees, Prossie Kimbowa together with 10 others, petitioned the High Court seeking to stop their alleged irregular and unfair sacking.

Nakawa High Court deputy registrar, Amos Kwizera, on January 29 ordered UCC against sacking and replacing the affected staff members pending hearing of the petition on Thursday February 4.

"In the meantime, the respondent (UCC), its officers, servants, agents or any other person are restrained from removing the applicants from the respondent's workforce/service and from recruiting other persons to fill the vacancies arising out of impugned restructuring process pending the hearing inter-parties of this application for an interim order as scheduled above," the deputy registrar stated.

But UCC through its lawyers, Kampala Associated Advocates, wrote back to court; "whereas UCC is a law-abiding institution, the said order is not possible of being implemented, and cannot be effectuated…"

UCC argued that when the workers' contracts expired on January 31, the institution had the right, discretion and prerogative to renew their contracts. "UCC duly notified the applicants by letters dated December 10, 2015, that it was not going to renew their contracts. The status quo at the moment is that the applicants' contracts expired and presently, they ceased to be employees of UCC."

UCC contended that by the time they were served with the court order on February 1, the applicants had already been removed from the institution's workforce/service since January 29 was their last day of work and none of them reported to work on February 1.

UCC said the court order does not, and does not require the institution to give applicants fresh contracts after the expiry of their old contracts.

This all comes at a time when the Inspector General of Government (IGG) is also investigating circumstances under which UCC sacked its 21 staff. In a petition filed with the IGG, Justice Irene Mulyagonja through Centre for Legal Aid, the affected UCC staff claim they were unfairly and irregularly sacked.

They asked the IGG to investigate the UCC board and management for flouting the rule of law and principles of natural justice while implementing the restructuring.

IGG spokesperson Ali Munira confirmed receipt of the petition, but could not readily tell how far investigations had gone. By the time of the restructure, UCC had about 140 staff.

The affected workers accuse the UCC executive director, Godfrey Mutabazi, and board chairman, Eng. Dr. Vincent Kasangaki, of masterminding their sacking for reasons ‘best known to them'.

The affected staff claimed they were victimised through a flawed and corrupt restructuring exercise. They queried the procedure followed to reach the decision to end their contracts as well as the involvement of the board chairman in the whole exercise.

Mutabazi in response said he was aware of the petition but was quick to add; "all matters have been resolved and I have no further comment."

Kasangaki on the other hand said he only got to know of the petition in the media, adding that he has neither seen a copy of the petition nor got any communication from the IGG regarding the matter.