Showdown as suspended airline staff file defence

By MICHAEL WAKABI

Suspended officials of Uganda Airlines submitted their written defences to the management and shareholders, setting the stage for a final showdown with investigators who wrote a damning report against them.

Based on the investigation team’s report, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni last month ordered the dismissal and prosecution of board members, senior managers and junior officers including pilots over a litany of accusations including mismanagement, graft and incompetence.

However, fearing a legal backlash, cautious officials at the Ministry of Works sought the opinion of the Attorney General, who recommended two separate tribunals to give the officials who have been on suspension since May a fair hearing. The senior managers and suspended board members will now appear before a panel constituted by the ministries of Finance and Works and Transport while the junior officers will be heard by the airline’s management.

The board and senior management are accused of engaging in corrupt practises such as bribery for jobs and in procurement, inflating prices and failing the certification of the Airbus A330 fleet among other things. While the board’s responses to the accusations are yet to be made publicly available, sources say the defences filed by some officers paint the picture of intrigues within the airline and a shoddy investigation that appeared to rely a lot on hearsay.

For instance, one expatriate manager is accused alongside others of soliciting bribes in the recruitment of staff and procurement of ground handling services in Juba. The investigators allege that the team gave the contract in Juba to a briefcase company after receiving inducements of $15,000. But the manager contends that he was not involved in the recruitment process and, in any case, the duty managers in his department were recruited before he joined the airline. But insiders say the said briefcase company is the bigger ground handler in South Sudan with better equipment and superior insurance cover.

Another manager faces six charges, including alleged failure to manage and use the airline’s flight data system to identify potential hazards, involving himself in areas outside his core functions, pushing for hiring of pilots who did not meet minimum qualifications, soliciting bribes from bidders and prospective employees and smuggling candidates who were not short-listed into interviews for cabin crew.

President Museveni was particularly angered by this allegation after it was claimed that one pilot on the CRJ-900 was sent to train as a first officer on the A330 without achieving minimum flying hours. Records show that Uganda Airlines only recruits first officers with a minimum of 500 flying hours while Airbus accepts pilots with a commercial pilots’ licence to train as first officers on its aircraft. The pilot is said to have had logged 1,000 hours at the time he was sent to train on the A330 and successfully completed his training.

A pilot with a cumulative experience of 5,800 flying hours is accused of putting passengers’ lives at risk when he allegedly continued to fly passengers on the CRJ after failing to qualify for the type during company-sponsored simulator training on two occasions. It is also alleged that he then subsequently sponsored himself for a third shot at the CRJ simulator.