In her letter dated 26th October, 2023 to Permanent Secretary and also the Secretary to Treasury Ramathan Ggoobi, the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Public Service and also Secretary to cabinet Lucy Nakyobe directed that Geraldine Ssali Busuulwa, the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Trade, Industries and Cooperatives (MTIC) be reinstated with full powers in her offices.
Nakyobe Cited President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s letter dated 22nd October, 2023 concerning Ssali’s situation by decreasing her powers in the ministry in which she is the accounting officer.
Few weeks back, working on the directives of the parliamentary Committee on Trade chaired by Mwine Mpaka, Ggoobi replaced Ssali as the accounting officer with her Under Secretary Oyo Andima.
Sources close to Ssali revealed that since then, she has been having clandestine meetings to explain herself before people she knows have powers to influence and have Ggoobi’s decision reversed.
Sources said that among the people Ssali pleaded with was Gen. Salim Saleh president Museveni’s younger brother and also one of his chief advisors.
Sources divulged that Ssali explained to Gen. Saleh that she is being tormented because she saved government from losing billions of shillings in a deal she refused.
Sources said that Museveni’s letter was based on Gen. Saleh’s advice who realised that Ssali’s decision indeed saved the government from losing billions of shillings.
Sources claim that Ssali together with Ggoobi are among the many top government officials who Gen. Saleh recommended to be given jobs in President Museveni’s government.
Ssali’s reinstatement is a big blow to a certain ruthless tycoon who wanted the Trade ministry to rent on his building in Kampala, a deal where he was expecting to collect billions of money each year.
The said tycoon is known to be in cahoots with some members of the deep state who have severally used such schemes to put down government officers who tried to frustrate their business deals with government.
Before Ssali, their recent victim was Sylvia Muwebwa Ntambi, the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) who was humiliated and charged in Courts of law with offences related to corruption and embezzlement of public funds.
In 2020, Ntambi was charged before the Anti-Corruption Court on allegations of conspiring to defraud the government of Uganda a sum of Uganda Shillings thirty five million, Two Thousand (Shs. 35,002,000).
Ntambi was also charged with abuse of office when she neglected her duty of directing the affairs and administration as the chairperson of the Commission thereby leading to gross mismanagement of the Commission’s funds.
She was immediately interdicted on the instructions of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) but in 2021.
The same DPP dropped charges against her and highly placed sources in the Ministry of Finance Planning and Economic Development told theGrapevine that all of Ntambi’s troubles started when she stopped the commission from renting on one of the newly completed building belonging to this same malicious tycoon in town who has a lot of buildings.
Back to Ssali, her troubles stem from Mwine’s committee investigation which established that she mismanaged public money.
However, in her defense, Ssali explained that her ministry received a Supplementary Budget of Shs5bn meant to procure office space for the ministry offices for rent because Farmer’s House, a building which currently houses the ministry, was considered overly dilapidated.
She further explained that during the financial year 2022-23, the ministry received Shs.3bn and was added to Shs5bn which totaled Shs.8bn for rent in that particular year.
She added that the ministry however had prior justified that there was need for a further Shs3bn for partitioning and Shs2bn for furniture and after weighing all the options, they decided to renovate Farmer’s House at a much lesser cost than incurring recurrent costs on rent annually.
She disclosed that she was even given clearance by the Solicitor General to proceed with renovating Farmer’s house.
She explained that currently, government is undertaking a rationalization of government agencies programmes with the main goal of cutting down costs like rent.
So, instead of taking the ministry to a new building where government would be spending huge sums of money monthly, she took the option of renovating farmer’s house which would help government save a lot of money.
She added that her ministry was going to be home to an additional three government agencies and these are Uganda Warehouse Receipting Systems Authority, Uganda Export Promotions Board and Uganda Free Zones Authority.
Sources told theGrapevine that it is this information that Ssali re-laid to Gen. Saleh explaining why she was being fought.
This is not the first time that Ssali is having trouble with individuals in the Deep State.
Around 2017, when she was still Deputy Managing Director at National Social Security Fund (NSSF), Ssali developed a misunderstanding with her then Boss Richard Byarugaba.
Ssali disclosed that the way Byarugaba ran the pension Fund was questionable. This put her into a lot of trouble with the big guns in NSSF and Ministry of Finance and she ended up losing her Job.
By the time she was fired, Ssali had exhibited high performance at the pension fund according to the IGG findings.
This performance was manifested in the surplus that was realized in the Fund’s financial receipts in 2014 when she was Ag MD whereby after paying members an interest of 13%, the NSSF had excess liquidity of 272bn.
Moreover this was at a time most of the top NSSF managers were holding positions in acting capacity without being confirmed. She was the Acting MD; Kasirye Joseph was Ag head of HRM and was later replaced by Eseza Byakika who also was in acting capacity.
Fast forward in 2023, Byarugaba was booted from the Job of MD NSSF after a battle with his line minister Betty Amongi who accused him mismanaging the fund.
The IGG also implicated him on embezzlement, Corruption and mismanagement of the pension fund. However, the IGG later exonerated him.
After being let loose by the IGG, Byarugaba ran to court challenging the decision to fire him and the case is still pending hearing.
By Sengooba Alirabaki
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