During the commission of inquiriy into the Protected Areas Management For Sustainable Use – PAMSU of the Uganda wildlife Authority – UWA this Thursday a witness Mr. Kalanguka Kayondho who is the Investment and Private Sector Commissioner at the Ministry of Finance said the relationship between Uganda Wildlife Authority Management and two of its successive board of directors was “negatively good”.
Mr. Kalanguka said that the two successive Uganda Wildlife Authority chairmen on several occasions made decisions without the consultation of other board members a thing which frustrated the different functions of the Uganda Wildlife Authority board.
The six member Protected Areas Management Sustainable Unit commission of inquiry is being headed by Justice George Kanyeihamba who is a retired High Court Judge. The Commission is investigating the circumstances in which about $30 million which was given to Uganda Wildlife Authority by the World Bank was spent between 2002 and 2008. The $30 million was meant to help Uganda Wildlife Authority in building its capacity as well as for infrastructure development. Uganda safari
This money like any other money that the Uganda Wildlife Authority – UWA gets is supposed to be managed by the UWA board. The Uganda Wildlife Authority board is responsible for budgets, financial statements and reports reviews and approvals.
Mr. Kayondho who is a UWA board member said that from 2002 – 2008 the board chairmen were Mr. Andrew Kasirye and Mr. John Nagenda and that they only closely worked with Mr. Arthur Mugisha and Mr. Moses Mapesa who were the Uganda Wildlife Authority Executive directors. They only brought in the proposals to the UWA board meetings after it had been discussed between them and they then reluctantly approved.
Mr. Kayondho said that the Uganda Wildlife Authority management implemented decisions without consulting with the board which was supposed to be the one implementing the decisions. After repeatedly failing appear before the Uganda Wildlife Authority, Justice G. Kanyeihamba nearly issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Kayondho. He however said that the summons should have been issued through the Ministry of Finance and that he was not to appear before the commission.
He said that during the six years he never heard or read any communication from the ministry of tourism to Uganda Wildlife Authority. Hesitant at first, Mr. Kayondo later said that decisions were brought to the board and despite irregularities they had to just pass them. It also appeared that although he had individual disagreements with the decisions he never went on record to express his dissatisfaction.
A case in point was the issuance of sport hunting licenses to different companies based on individual assumptions by some board members that the popular of many of the wildlife species had increased tremendously. According to Mr. Kayondho, it wasn’t clear how these individuals had arrived to such conclusions.
Another of the witnesses was Ms. Grace Mbabazi who said that she had taken development proposals from the Uganda Wildlife Authority Executives instead of the UWA board and she said she didn’t know it was not the proper procedure.
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