We must have order in Kampala - CEO
ON Friday May 27 2011, <b>Henry Mukasa</b> and <b>Juliet Waisswa</b> caught up with the newly appointed chief executive officer (CEO) of Kampala Capital City Authority, Jennifer Musisi Semakula. Below are excerpts from the interview.
ON Friday May 27 2011, Henry Mukasa and Juliet Waisswa caught up with the newly appointed chief executive officer (CEO) of Kampala Capital City Authority, Jennifer Musisi Semakula. Below are excerpts from the interview.
How have you found office so far?
It has been extremely busy. I came in when the financial year was about to end. I have had to prepare a budget framework paper and a budget. I have also had to prepare for the establishment of the new institution, Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA).
Kampala City Council was a local authority, but KCCA is a corporate entity of Government functioning like any other parastatals.
So should we expect restructuring and hence retrenchment of some staff?
The law provides for restructuring and because it is a new institution, we are legally ending one and beginning another.
The law provides that the old staff, who would want to come to the new institution, will undergo competitive interviews in order to take up the jobs. That is essentially so because in drawing up the new corporate structure, the functions of some departments, jobs, operations are being re-defined and the mandate of the institution has broadened.
We, therefore, have to match staff to those new functions and job roles in order to deliver the mandate of the institution. That law also provides that staff that leave will be paid and we have made provision in the budget.
I should point out that because of the differences in the roles I have mentioned, the staff numbers have to be varied. We will probably not have the same numbers. Inevitably, there will be some job loses, but I also know a big number of staff will have to stay, but we shall also have new ones come in.
Hasn’t that brought in anxiety and impacted on work?
It would be unnatural to say that there is no apprehension. It is a natural reaction to change. I had hoped that, because the passing of this law has taken about two years, the staff who get the immediate impact of this law, read the Bill.
I would also imagine that management adequately prepared them for the new institution. Although the impact of the reality is expected, I know the staff knew all along that this was coming.
What priorities have you set?
Priority number one is to establish the new institution. Number two, is staffing in terms of personnel and remuneration.
If we are going to move this institution from where it was stalled for many years, we have to engage a professional, skilled, motivated efficient work-force.
There is no way we are going to do that when are going to pay them as they have been paid for the past so many years. The low pay also breeds a lot of other problems. We are proposing in the budget remuneration that is competitive… one that can even attract skills from other institutions.
I have already been contacted by people in the diaspora who want to come to serve in the authority in areas of waste management, traffic management, planning, restructuring of cities… people with skills working in other jurisdictions. But the first question they are asking me is: “How much are you going to pay us?â€
There is no way I can tell them I will be paying them sh600,000 as management staff, absolutely no way. That is a cost Government has to meet: Pay staff well and then ask them to deliver what you want.
Third, is garbage collection or solid waste management as it is called. We are looking at expanding our efficiencies, providing more disposal facilities, building more garbage banks in different locations where people can deposit garbage before our trucks pick it, populating all public places with trash disposal facilities, dustbins and polythene bags. We are going to do massive sensitisation first that: “Please don’t litter, please don’t throw rubbish out of your car, and please don’t bring vegetation in the city with your potatoes…â€
Will it be carrot and stick?
There are people who have seen litter around them all their lives and need to be told that litter is not a good thing. They will be shown where to dispose their litter. If we do that and they don’t comply, then the law kicks in to make sure they comply. The laws are in the books, but for reasons not clear to me, they have not been implemented.
But law enforcement officers have been going after vendors and leaving basic things like littering and people turning dark corners into urinals?
Before you enforce you must provide the mechanism to enable people to comply. If you don’t have public toilets then people are going to use the flower beds and dark corners as toilet facilities.
Like I am very conscientious about trash, I don’t just throw trash as a characteristic of me, but I am always amazed at how few trash cans there are in this country: You go to a public office and they do not have dust bins. We are going to provide hundreds of thousands of millions of bins but the regulations also require that the business owners provide facilities for garbage at their premises, disposed of regularly.
Most drainage channels in the city have either been blocked by silt or refuse from food vendors or plastic bottles. How are you going to ensure that channels are not dumping grounds which has led to flooding, Kampala’s latest definition?
What I did not mention as one of our priorities is roads. We are involved in massive road repair with the funds (sh10b). Part of that effort is to de-silt and open up drainages.
If we do not de-silt and open up drainage channels, the water from the rain just makes its channels and spoil the roads we are trying to maintain.
Surprising as it may seem, we have the equipment we want for this task. I was actually amazed at the amount of equipment KCC has. A lot of it was under-utilised and most of it not utilised. We are going to utilise this capacity to de-silt, patch-up. We have that equipment, we shall only need materials.
Dumping in drainage channels is a big problem. Last week, we were at Nakivubo Channel and about a mile or so is full of plastics. We shall, with heavy equipment, remove that junk because it is also garbage.
We are on the Northern by-pass, we are in the slum areas and we are going to work with the local communities. I have already distributed wheel burrows, hoes, spades and forks to them. When you are going to clean a sewer, you need gloves and gumboots and that is why we are providing them.
Won’t they end up on the market?
We are working with community organisations and they have leaders who are committed to work with our division waste management engineers to ensure that our equipment is secure. We may lose a few here and there, but it is worth it because it involves the community. It will work in slum areas where our trucks cannot reach to collect garbage.
What about the dust that is spewed in the air by wind during the dry seasons?
Dust is created by the environment. If we have potholes, that means soil is exposed. The other thing is the state of pavements. Most of them are broken up and muddy. Part of our budget will go to doing pavements, starting with the Central Business District.
It is a big and, expensive job but we are looking at doing it cost-effectively. I have a sample of a paver that was done from plastic bottles and sand. They were tasted by the National Bureau of Standards and are stronger than concrete ones. We only need a facility first to melt these bottles and then provide lake sand and molds. When we do this, you create employment; provide pavers and a solution to these bottles.
The biggest culprits in breaking up these pavements are service providers; water or telephone companies. Why is it that they never restore the pavements and leave gaping holes?
The problem has been supervision and enforcement on the part of the authorities. All these things are provided for in the law. They (service providers) get permission from us to dig these trenches to run the cables or whatever and one of the conditions is that they have to restore these pavements to their original status when they finish their work. The challenge is that the people who are supposed to supervise to ensure that this happens do not do their work.
I have also been told by some of these services providers that although they pay a certain fee to us to fix the roads, we don’t do it. On our part, we shall see that they comply with the conditions and that we supervise because they are destroying the roads even as we fix them.
Let’s talk about traffic congestion: How are you going to streamline this sector; the taxi parks are in a despicable situation?
We are looking at contracts of people managing parks. We want to get them to understand their obligations, then we will be able to call on them to account.
The way the buildings have been constructed… ideally they are supposed to have parking underneath. I am told the plans they bring here for approval show that. On ground, they convert this parking into basement shops. The people who are supposed to supervise buildings have not been doing it. We are going to do it now.
The bigger solution which might take sometime to implement is that we may need a ring route around the city and it will be accessible to buses. There is a contract where someone is bringing in buses to run in the city. If we have these buses then it means we have fewer vehicles on the road than the commuters we have now.
The other is to have satellite taxi parks in Nakawa, Kawempe, Makindye and Rubaga so that taxis stop there and buses pick people and bring them to the city. It does not make sense to have a park in the middle of such a busy city.
That sounds like a good proposal and it has been said before, but we are told that UTODA, who are now being described as untouchables, have always fought it?
In my mind, no one untouchable. I have seen people in the highest offices in this land challenged in court. That means there are no untouchables. I think the untouchable factor is more in people’s minds than in reality. I have dealt with people who are said to be untouchable in the short time I have been here and they don’t seem to be untouchable when you talk to them. And I don’t want to encourage them to think they are untouchable because to me, there are laws, systems, procedure… and everyone is bound by the laws.
Who is supposed to maintain the taxi parks; the tender holder or the authority?
We are studying the contracts: there are aspects that we have to maintain like the carpet area of the taxi park, in one of the contracts, then there other areas like; cleaning, which the operators manage. We are reviewing these contracts. There are some provisions which we think need to change. The management of the contracts, the collections… we are getting all sorts of stories that our collections are not coming in and why. We need to make sure that money comes in.
We shall ensure better contract management, better terms in the interest of all Ugandans and better compliance so that when there is not compliance, we impose the penalties.
The local government accounts committee of Parliament said UTODA owed KCC billions of shillings and their contract is still running. Even Parliament could not get them account?
We are reviewing our relations with UTODA as I said. I will be telling you what comes out of that review.
I will take you to the issue of street vending in the city… people laying out merchandise like tomatoes on the roads?
Only in Kampala and no other city in the world do you see that happening. Streets were meant for people to walk on and not for vegetables and fruits. There are laws regulating this. Otherwise as a shop owner why should I pay a trade license when I can put my wares on the street in front of me? So there is unfairness in allowing people to vend on the pavements and force people inside the buildings on the same pavement to pay license fees.
Secondly, the obstruction: Anyone going to town must brace themselves for the congestion, you cannot even access shops because of the congestion of vendors. We must have some order in the city. Everyone asks, ‘why is Kampala not like this city or that city?’ Those cities that you are talking about are very firm in their enforcement and people are forced to comply. That is why they are orderly. And that is what we want to do, impose the regulations, enforce them so that people comply.
We shall also deal with the indiscipline of developers who bring building materials and dump them on our roads and hoard sections of the roads to build their private buildings.
How do you relate with the other mayors in the divisions (municipalities)?
The mayors are politicians. When you look at their manifestos or their proclamations when they came into office, we have a common agenda… to bring order in the city, enforce accountability, remove corruption, cover pot holes and get street lighting. I have already had interaction with some of them, including our Lord Mayor and we are all working towards the same goal.
The mayors supervise in the divisions so that when we send the money its well utilised and that when you send there trucks they are not hijacked and hired out to private individuals. The mayors are important in mobilising and sensitising the people for all these programmes.
So you have agreed not to let politics stand in the way of a better Kampala?
Fortunately I am not a politician. I am a professional, a technical person if you want. I am very careful not to mix politics in my work. I have made a request at different levels that politicians should allow me do my work. I have a mandate I was given this assignment by His Excellency (the President) probably because he believes I will make a contribution.
I have also requested at different forums that politicians should restrain themselves and let us the technical people do our work. And I am not going to allow the two to be confused otherwise I will fail like those before me.
About how long should we give you to see a sparkle in Kampala?
I am getting a lot of positive comments about people beginning to notice there is a change… the potholes disappearing, the renovations, the cleanliness… then rubbish levels getting lower...
The sparkle I want to see must be supported by a budget. When I get the budget I want and the right workforce, there is reason to promise a sparkle. When I get the two, I am ready to work 24-hours a day!
Have you met the staff to hand down the ground rules?
I have communicated to management and staff what I want. I have had to take some disciplinary action about some staff who don’t understand what I want and who I think are not able to deliver. But really it is a mindset. I do not expect them to change overnight. People have been working under government departments and public service and report to office at 10:00am yet I am used to arriving at work at 7:00am. So we need to find a meeting point.
Have you found some traces of corruption?
To the extent that I have had to ask police to deploy a branch here to handle the issues I have of corruption! Things that I think need criminal investigation… When we begin prosecuting them, putting some in jail or when court acquits them, you will know. A lot of it is criminal liability… the way property has been managed! I am asking many questions and these questions require investigation and that is why CID has given me a team.
It is not because I want to get people in trouble, but I am now the accounting officer of this institution. Even things that happened to this institution many years ago, I will be asked, ‘what happened to this property, vehicles, money…’ I will need to give an answer. When the Auditor General asks, ‘what did you do when this happened?’ I have to give an answer.
KCC had reached at a point that some funding agencies were withdrawing funding because of lack of accountability or lack of absorption of funds. I don’t want that to happen. I need all the support and goodwill of the funding institutions. That is why I have had to get to the bottom of all these issues.
Any message to Kampalans?
Stop trashing the city, stop throwing rubbish out of your cars, teach your children not to litter.
The things that we are going to do to change Kampala are going to cause some inconvenience and discomfort to some people. I want people to understand that we are doing it in the best interest of the city.
There are people who have been doing what they believed was right in their sight and have been running to politicians and security agents. That is not how we are going to work now. We are going to work according to the laws and regulations. I will want everybody to support us in doing that so that in the end we have a city which everybody is proud of. I want to deliver at the end of my term a transformed city.
How have you found office so far?
It has been extremely busy. I came in when the financial year was about to end. I have had to prepare a budget framework paper and a budget. I have also had to prepare for the establishment of the new institution, Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA).
Kampala City Council was a local authority, but KCCA is a corporate entity of Government functioning like any other parastatals.
So should we expect restructuring and hence retrenchment of some staff?
The law provides for restructuring and because it is a new institution, we are legally ending one and beginning another.
The law provides that the old staff, who would want to come to the new institution, will undergo competitive interviews in order to take up the jobs. That is essentially so because in drawing up the new corporate structure, the functions of some departments, jobs, operations are being re-defined and the mandate of the institution has broadened.
We, therefore, have to match staff to those new functions and job roles in order to deliver the mandate of the institution. That law also provides that staff that leave will be paid and we have made provision in the budget.
I should point out that because of the differences in the roles I have mentioned, the staff numbers have to be varied. We will probably not have the same numbers. Inevitably, there will be some job loses, but I also know a big number of staff will have to stay, but we shall also have new ones come in.
Hasn’t that brought in anxiety and impacted on work?
It would be unnatural to say that there is no apprehension. It is a natural reaction to change. I had hoped that, because the passing of this law has taken about two years, the staff who get the immediate impact of this law, read the Bill.
I would also imagine that management adequately prepared them for the new institution. Although the impact of the reality is expected, I know the staff knew all along that this was coming.
What priorities have you set?
Priority number one is to establish the new institution. Number two, is staffing in terms of personnel and remuneration.
If we are going to move this institution from where it was stalled for many years, we have to engage a professional, skilled, motivated efficient work-force.
There is no way we are going to do that when are going to pay them as they have been paid for the past so many years. The low pay also breeds a lot of other problems. We are proposing in the budget remuneration that is competitive… one that can even attract skills from other institutions.
I have already been contacted by people in the diaspora who want to come to serve in the authority in areas of waste management, traffic management, planning, restructuring of cities… people with skills working in other jurisdictions. But the first question they are asking me is: “How much are you going to pay us?â€
There is no way I can tell them I will be paying them sh600,000 as management staff, absolutely no way. That is a cost Government has to meet: Pay staff well and then ask them to deliver what you want.
Third, is garbage collection or solid waste management as it is called. We are looking at expanding our efficiencies, providing more disposal facilities, building more garbage banks in different locations where people can deposit garbage before our trucks pick it, populating all public places with trash disposal facilities, dustbins and polythene bags. We are going to do massive sensitisation first that: “Please don’t litter, please don’t throw rubbish out of your car, and please don’t bring vegetation in the city with your potatoes…â€
Will it be carrot and stick?
There are people who have seen litter around them all their lives and need to be told that litter is not a good thing. They will be shown where to dispose their litter. If we do that and they don’t comply, then the law kicks in to make sure they comply. The laws are in the books, but for reasons not clear to me, they have not been implemented.
But law enforcement officers have been going after vendors and leaving basic things like littering and people turning dark corners into urinals?
Before you enforce you must provide the mechanism to enable people to comply. If you don’t have public toilets then people are going to use the flower beds and dark corners as toilet facilities.
Like I am very conscientious about trash, I don’t just throw trash as a characteristic of me, but I am always amazed at how few trash cans there are in this country: You go to a public office and they do not have dust bins. We are going to provide hundreds of thousands of millions of bins but the regulations also require that the business owners provide facilities for garbage at their premises, disposed of regularly.
Most drainage channels in the city have either been blocked by silt or refuse from food vendors or plastic bottles. How are you going to ensure that channels are not dumping grounds which has led to flooding, Kampala’s latest definition?
What I did not mention as one of our priorities is roads. We are involved in massive road repair with the funds (sh10b). Part of that effort is to de-silt and open up drainages.
If we do not de-silt and open up drainage channels, the water from the rain just makes its channels and spoil the roads we are trying to maintain.
Surprising as it may seem, we have the equipment we want for this task. I was actually amazed at the amount of equipment KCC has. A lot of it was under-utilised and most of it not utilised. We are going to utilise this capacity to de-silt, patch-up. We have that equipment, we shall only need materials.
Dumping in drainage channels is a big problem. Last week, we were at Nakivubo Channel and about a mile or so is full of plastics. We shall, with heavy equipment, remove that junk because it is also garbage.
We are on the Northern by-pass, we are in the slum areas and we are going to work with the local communities. I have already distributed wheel burrows, hoes, spades and forks to them. When you are going to clean a sewer, you need gloves and gumboots and that is why we are providing them.
Won’t they end up on the market?
We are working with community organisations and they have leaders who are committed to work with our division waste management engineers to ensure that our equipment is secure. We may lose a few here and there, but it is worth it because it involves the community. It will work in slum areas where our trucks cannot reach to collect garbage.
What about the dust that is spewed in the air by wind during the dry seasons?
Dust is created by the environment. If we have potholes, that means soil is exposed. The other thing is the state of pavements. Most of them are broken up and muddy. Part of our budget will go to doing pavements, starting with the Central Business District.
It is a big and, expensive job but we are looking at doing it cost-effectively. I have a sample of a paver that was done from plastic bottles and sand. They were tasted by the National Bureau of Standards and are stronger than concrete ones. We only need a facility first to melt these bottles and then provide lake sand and molds. When we do this, you create employment; provide pavers and a solution to these bottles.
The biggest culprits in breaking up these pavements are service providers; water or telephone companies. Why is it that they never restore the pavements and leave gaping holes?
The problem has been supervision and enforcement on the part of the authorities. All these things are provided for in the law. They (service providers) get permission from us to dig these trenches to run the cables or whatever and one of the conditions is that they have to restore these pavements to their original status when they finish their work. The challenge is that the people who are supposed to supervise to ensure that this happens do not do their work.
I have also been told by some of these services providers that although they pay a certain fee to us to fix the roads, we don’t do it. On our part, we shall see that they comply with the conditions and that we supervise because they are destroying the roads even as we fix them.
Let’s talk about traffic congestion: How are you going to streamline this sector; the taxi parks are in a despicable situation?
We are looking at contracts of people managing parks. We want to get them to understand their obligations, then we will be able to call on them to account.
The way the buildings have been constructed… ideally they are supposed to have parking underneath. I am told the plans they bring here for approval show that. On ground, they convert this parking into basement shops. The people who are supposed to supervise buildings have not been doing it. We are going to do it now.
The bigger solution which might take sometime to implement is that we may need a ring route around the city and it will be accessible to buses. There is a contract where someone is bringing in buses to run in the city. If we have these buses then it means we have fewer vehicles on the road than the commuters we have now.
The other is to have satellite taxi parks in Nakawa, Kawempe, Makindye and Rubaga so that taxis stop there and buses pick people and bring them to the city. It does not make sense to have a park in the middle of such a busy city.
That sounds like a good proposal and it has been said before, but we are told that UTODA, who are now being described as untouchables, have always fought it?
In my mind, no one untouchable. I have seen people in the highest offices in this land challenged in court. That means there are no untouchables. I think the untouchable factor is more in people’s minds than in reality. I have dealt with people who are said to be untouchable in the short time I have been here and they don’t seem to be untouchable when you talk to them. And I don’t want to encourage them to think they are untouchable because to me, there are laws, systems, procedure… and everyone is bound by the laws.
Who is supposed to maintain the taxi parks; the tender holder or the authority?
We are studying the contracts: there are aspects that we have to maintain like the carpet area of the taxi park, in one of the contracts, then there other areas like; cleaning, which the operators manage. We are reviewing these contracts. There are some provisions which we think need to change. The management of the contracts, the collections… we are getting all sorts of stories that our collections are not coming in and why. We need to make sure that money comes in.
We shall ensure better contract management, better terms in the interest of all Ugandans and better compliance so that when there is not compliance, we impose the penalties.
The local government accounts committee of Parliament said UTODA owed KCC billions of shillings and their contract is still running. Even Parliament could not get them account?
We are reviewing our relations with UTODA as I said. I will be telling you what comes out of that review.
I will take you to the issue of street vending in the city… people laying out merchandise like tomatoes on the roads?
Only in Kampala and no other city in the world do you see that happening. Streets were meant for people to walk on and not for vegetables and fruits. There are laws regulating this. Otherwise as a shop owner why should I pay a trade license when I can put my wares on the street in front of me? So there is unfairness in allowing people to vend on the pavements and force people inside the buildings on the same pavement to pay license fees.
Secondly, the obstruction: Anyone going to town must brace themselves for the congestion, you cannot even access shops because of the congestion of vendors. We must have some order in the city. Everyone asks, ‘why is Kampala not like this city or that city?’ Those cities that you are talking about are very firm in their enforcement and people are forced to comply. That is why they are orderly. And that is what we want to do, impose the regulations, enforce them so that people comply.
We shall also deal with the indiscipline of developers who bring building materials and dump them on our roads and hoard sections of the roads to build their private buildings.
How do you relate with the other mayors in the divisions (municipalities)?
The mayors are politicians. When you look at their manifestos or their proclamations when they came into office, we have a common agenda… to bring order in the city, enforce accountability, remove corruption, cover pot holes and get street lighting. I have already had interaction with some of them, including our Lord Mayor and we are all working towards the same goal.
The mayors supervise in the divisions so that when we send the money its well utilised and that when you send there trucks they are not hijacked and hired out to private individuals. The mayors are important in mobilising and sensitising the people for all these programmes.
So you have agreed not to let politics stand in the way of a better Kampala?
Fortunately I am not a politician. I am a professional, a technical person if you want. I am very careful not to mix politics in my work. I have made a request at different levels that politicians should allow me do my work. I have a mandate I was given this assignment by His Excellency (the President) probably because he believes I will make a contribution.
I have also requested at different forums that politicians should restrain themselves and let us the technical people do our work. And I am not going to allow the two to be confused otherwise I will fail like those before me.
About how long should we give you to see a sparkle in Kampala?
I am getting a lot of positive comments about people beginning to notice there is a change… the potholes disappearing, the renovations, the cleanliness… then rubbish levels getting lower...
The sparkle I want to see must be supported by a budget. When I get the budget I want and the right workforce, there is reason to promise a sparkle. When I get the two, I am ready to work 24-hours a day!
Have you met the staff to hand down the ground rules?
I have communicated to management and staff what I want. I have had to take some disciplinary action about some staff who don’t understand what I want and who I think are not able to deliver. But really it is a mindset. I do not expect them to change overnight. People have been working under government departments and public service and report to office at 10:00am yet I am used to arriving at work at 7:00am. So we need to find a meeting point.
Have you found some traces of corruption?
To the extent that I have had to ask police to deploy a branch here to handle the issues I have of corruption! Things that I think need criminal investigation… When we begin prosecuting them, putting some in jail or when court acquits them, you will know. A lot of it is criminal liability… the way property has been managed! I am asking many questions and these questions require investigation and that is why CID has given me a team.
It is not because I want to get people in trouble, but I am now the accounting officer of this institution. Even things that happened to this institution many years ago, I will be asked, ‘what happened to this property, vehicles, money…’ I will need to give an answer. When the Auditor General asks, ‘what did you do when this happened?’ I have to give an answer.
KCC had reached at a point that some funding agencies were withdrawing funding because of lack of accountability or lack of absorption of funds. I don’t want that to happen. I need all the support and goodwill of the funding institutions. That is why I have had to get to the bottom of all these issues.
Any message to Kampalans?
Stop trashing the city, stop throwing rubbish out of your cars, teach your children not to litter.
The things that we are going to do to change Kampala are going to cause some inconvenience and discomfort to some people. I want people to understand that we are doing it in the best interest of the city.
There are people who have been doing what they believed was right in their sight and have been running to politicians and security agents. That is not how we are going to work now. We are going to work according to the laws and regulations. I will want everybody to support us in doing that so that in the end we have a city which everybody is proud of. I want to deliver at the end of my term a transformed city.