Workers'' House suicide girl lived tormented life

By Joseph Makumbi & Nicholas Kajoba

KAMPALA - The girl who reportedly plunged to her death from the 14th floor of Workers House in Kampala lived a tormented life in the days leading up to her demise.

Annet Ashaba, according to her brother Ezra Isingoma, had just returned from Dubai where she had gone for greener pastures.

Ashaba left for Dubai in November last year where she worked as a maid and later a supermarket attendant before she returned. true

Isingoma said his sister had narrated to him how she had been tortured and treated like a slave by her employers in Dubai.

"She would always cry while narratiing her ordeal; she looked like she was going through a lot of pain," he said.

Police Metropolitan spokesperson Patrick Onyango confirmed this version of events, saying the postmortem report revealed Ashaba's body was scarred all over.

Isingoma also revealed that in the days leading to her death Ashaba was always isolated and lost deep in thought, a clear sign of depression.

However, things kind of got better when she got another job in a supermarket.

"She started sending money home and even bought a plot of land," he says. But it is this part of the story that seems to explain how a young woman with so much ambition decided to end her life.

Every month Ashaba would send money to him for construction, and he would report back that things were working fine.

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Just two years ago, a young job-frustrated woman plunged to her death at the same building

Perhaps this was the motivation that spurred her on. But before long her new employers also started mistreating her.

Her brother says one day in the dead of night, Ashaba knocked at his door in Nnyanama where he resided, having returned from Dubai, broken and resigned.

Things took a turn for the worse when she found out that all the money she had been sending back home was not worth what was on ground.

"The plot of land was too small and the house as well. It could not justify the suffering she had gone through to make a better life," says Isingoma.

On the fateful Saturday, Ashaba asked her brother for transport money to town, saying she was going to withdraw money from the bank. "The next thing I heard was that she had leapt to her death at Workers House," Isingoma says.

In her hand was a document showing the purchase of a car, Toyota Raum which was in transit to Uganda.

Meantime, the Police say they are probing the clearing firm to which Ashaba had paid money to purchase the car.

"We have identified a firm that the deceased used to order for her vehicle which was not delivered in time. That is a major clue we are still investigating,” Kampala Metropolitan spokesperson Patrick Onyango Monday told the press in Kampala.

He added that the Police was also intrigued by the fact that whereas details of Ashaba’s passport number indicated that she was still in Dubai. “We are still puzzled how Ashaba managed to come back here. Her passport doesn’t show an exit stamp from Dubai,” he said.

The Police said detectives were also probing claims about the piece of land the woman had bought in Busabala, a city suburb.