Why Museveni fired Jamwa

The dossier shows that Kagonyera too received large salary advances worth Shs127m. With a gross salary of Shs16m plus the same benefits as Jamwa, taking salary advances of that amount was embarrassing.

Museveni was told that Jamwa’s personal conduct was likely to threaten the stability of NSSF. The MD was travelling abroad often.

NSSF provides its MD with a credit card which has a limit on how much money on it he can spend. The Fund also has a limit on how much the MD is entitled to spend on the card whenever he travels. The dossier says Jamwa always exceeded not only the limit on him as MD but also the limit on NSSF as card holder. The latter forced the issuers of the card, Visa, to call the guarantor, Barclays Bank, complaining. In turn, Barclays called NSSF raising concerns about over-expenditure on the card.

NSSF paid up to the money officially allocated to the MD for his travels and recovered the balance from Jamwa’s salary.

Given that he had huge salary advances which were being deducted off his salary every month, the additional credit card bill was taking a toll on his pay. Sometimes he earned only Shs 1m a month because of these deductions.

This, the president was told, created incentives for the MD to make up for this deficit by raising money for personal expenditure from ‘other sources.’ Suspicions were growing that every deal Jamwa would approve, he would have to have a personal ‘commission’ on it in order to make ends meet.

The dossier on Jamwa also queried his personal management. NSSF staff complained that he hardly came to office. They said he appeared in office only twice a week’ on Tuesday evenings and Thursday mornings. Sometimes, he allegedly only came to attend board or management committee meetings. Most of the time he took all his files home and worked from there!

The president was informed that he was also often unavailable on phone, always changing his numbers and making it difficult for his lieutenants to reach him.

Sources say that Museveni believed Jamwa’s financial situation rendered him susceptible to compromise. Thus, any NSSF investment and expenditure decisions approved by him became suspect. The case in point was the redesign for the development of the NSSF land on Plot 15A/B and 17 along Lumumba Avenue.

Initially, the design was for the construction of an eight-storey office complex at Shs 36bn. The contract was tendered through competitive bidding and Roko Construction won.

However, as construction got underway, Jamwa came with a redesign for a 25-storey complex as the tall tower, and two short towers of 10 floors each with a basement of four floors. The cost of the new structure was Shs 126bn. Later when they included Value Added Tax, the bill went to Shs 155bn.

Many experts say the redesign is a better utilisation of the plot than the initial design. The demand for office space in Kampala has grown rapidly over the years. Estimates show that currently there is office space shortage of 300,000 square metres in the city. This is equivalent to 20 buildings the size of Workers House. Therefore, the decision to use the plot along Lumumba Avenue for more office space was a smart investment decision.

The board okayed it subject to approval of the redesign by Kampala City Council (KCC), the Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Authority (PPDA) and Suruma.

Without re-tendering, Jamwa wrote to the project managers, Arch Design, on May 29, 2008 directing them to proceed with the work. It was a month after this, on July 1, 2008 that he wrote to Suruma seeking his approval as the board had directed.

From there, Roko began building according to the redesign. This created suspicion that the financially trapped Jamwa could be involved in something fishy.

Then on October 13, 2008, the building under construction collapsed killing eight people. NSSF had just submitted the redesign to KCC for approval. But government, through the Ministry of Works, set up a committee to investigate the cause of the incident and establish liability.

In this state of affairs, KCC wrote to NSSF saying they could not approve the redesign until the Ministry of Works investigation was concluded.

By the time The Independent went to press, the Works Ministry had finished the draft report only waiting for the signature of the Minister John Nasasira. The report, sources say, clears Roko of most of the wrongdoing. But this has already generated a storm.

The lawyer for Roko on this matter is Enos Tumusiime who is a brother-in-law to Nasasira. Many people are already grumbling that the report is soft on Roko because of the Nasasira-Tumusiime family connection.

The idea of establishing liability for the collapse of the building is important to all parties. If the liability falls on Roko, then the construction firm has to compensate NSSF for the time lost to the investigation because this pushes the completion date further ahead.

Meantime, a new problem has emerged over the new structure. According to PPDA rules, a contract can be varied up to 25 per cent of its original price. Since Roko was already building according to the redesign, it means that on the cost of the old structure, the highest amount that Roko could spend was Shs 45bn. So it wrote to NSSF saying the amount was enough to finish only the four basement floors and two floors thereafter.