Scribes held over extortion

Nov 09, 2010

TWO journalists have been arrested over extorting sh1.5m from Dr. William Muhairwe, the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) boss.

By Vision Reporters

TWO journalists have been arrested over extorting sh1.5m from Dr. William Muhairwe, the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) boss.

Yasser Kalyango, a sports journalist with The Daily Monitor, and Henry Mutyaba Katamba, a sports presenter at Kaboozi Ku Biri radio, were yesterday paraded before MPs on the Commissions, Statutory and State Enterprises committee.

The arrests followed a complaint by Muhairwe to committee chairperson Reagan Okumu over committee members attempting to extort money from him through journalists.

“When the NWSC boss complained, I advised him to arrange meetings with the journalists, and I assigned one of our committee CIDs to handle the matter,” Okumu said.

According to him, the journalists said they were representing committee members.

Muhairwe, who also attended the meeting, said a journalist identified as Kaweesa demanded sh40m from him, claiming that he had been sent by a personal assistant of Makindye East MP Micheal Mabikke, identified as Sserunjongi.

Late last month, Mabikke submitted to the committee a document containing information from a whistleblower within NWSC alleging that the water consumed by the public contained feaces.

The whistleblower added that Muhairwe had allegedly embezzled huge sums of money meant for the Ggaba water project.

Muhairwe said the journalist claimed that Mabikke wanted the money to reveal the names of NWSC staff who made the allegations against him.

Kaweesa then introduced Katamba, who demanded sh6m to connect Muhairwe to the ‘real person’ (Kalyango) who knows Mabikke.

Kalyango allegedly claimed to be the editor of the Weekly Mail, and assured Muhairwe that if ‘he behaves well’, there would be no more malicious publications about him.

Muhairwe then gave the journalists sh1.5m as “a start off”. “I recorded all our meeting proceedings. We also made copies of all the currency notes I gave them. After receiving the money, they were arrested at the exit of the NWSC offices,” he added.

This brings the number of journalists arrested over extortion to four.

The Police last week arrested three people, among them a lawyer, over attempting to solicit a sh50m bribe from the permanent secretary of the works ministry so as to write a favourable probe report.

The suspects are Chris Omony, Andrew Oryada and Geoffrey Nsamba.

On arrest, Omony claimed to be a New Vision employee, but New Vision said he was an occasional contributor.

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