Minister blasts PS of Fisheries

By Conan Businge and Kagolo Francis

Fisheries state minister Fred Mukisa has accused his Permanent Secretary and the technical staff of gross indiscipline and frustrating government programmes.

Mukisa said: “My PS (Vicent Rubarema) is hiding in technicalities to frustrate government. That is a dangerous position.”

“We are faced with a collapsing fisheries sector on our hands and I am not going to have incompetent managers on flimsy excuses and technicalities, appointed.”

Mukisa was yesterday addressing the press at the Media Centre, flanked by the fisheries head of department, Dr. Wilson Waiswa.

He explained that apart from the poor financing, there are cases of “gross indiscipline of the technical staff.”

“They have hijacked the political leadership’s role, and no longer want to take orders from the leadership,” he said. Attempts to reach Rubarema for a comment failed.

“All the mess of having a multitude of agencies masquerading as fisheries managers was brought about by errant technical directives,” Mukisa said.

He said the decision to delegate licensing to local councils, and recruitments in fisheries management, was done by technical managers “without clearance from political leadership”. “My efforts are also being frustrated by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Public Service Commission on technicalities.”

He decried the on-going internal recruitment in the fisheries ministry.

“The people they are about to recruit are the ones that have been failing me. We need fresh recruits willing to work.”

“The department needs a complete overhaul and review of the recruitment exercise. We need to reverse the collapse of the fisheries department.”

Mukisa said he was “very determined to get people who are up-to-the-job. All detractors are warned.”

“We are also planning to get those people that work for other agencies out of fisheries, and if possible arraign them before courts of law.”

The minister added that to stop illegal fishing “he needed people willing to work and who are not compromised”. He said wanted to “recall the licensing function from local councils to the department of fisheries, and to recentralise all fisheries enforcement facilities.”