By Simon Muyanga Lutaaya
The tenure of Dorothy Kisaka as Executive Director for Kampala Capital Authority is set to run down in a matter of days and a fierce fight for the position has been raging for the last couple of weeks and months.
As things stand, it’s highly unlikely that the former Museveni Advisor will be in charge of the Capital City’s Technical Wing at the turn of the current month as reports indicate that efforts by the mafia to send her parking are at an advanced stage.
According to reports in the media, Kisaka’s not been cleared to be considered by Public Service to retain her position yet she would ordinarily have been the first on the list. That simply implies that her Deputy, David Luyimbazi Ssali could be given the steering by the line Minister, Hajjat Minsa Kabanda to steer the institution in an acting capacity awaiting a later decision by the president.
As anyone must have witnessed, the past few weeks have witnessed tones of negativity written and said about KCCA, with others going too far to the extent of attacking the ED as a person. These have blindly not spared President Museven-the appointing authority whom they have shamelessly portrayed as a myopic man who should have chosen all the others around the ED but herself.
A certain publication in particular in one of the popular online blogs famous for fighting cyber wars for money would make it so easy for anybody with half a brain to tell that someone or some group of people must be bankrolling the bad character assassination against the woman who will naturally not fight back due to her exceedingly clean nature.
In a Saturday, 15 publication entitled ” The Rote at KCCA Explained”, the writer who introduces himself as a “twenty-something-year-old slighted by the ‘rotten’ fruits which our masters feed us” begins by unapologetically christening Kisaka as the most small-brained appointment to have been made by the President by using the word “Smidge.” He states”
“It has been alleged that the occupant of the top office at KCCA is a smidge underqualified for the job. Not only this, she is claimed to have a ‘psychological’ challenge (not in any sense a disease or condition) rooted in ego. Often, when one is underqualified and surrounded by people of better qualifications, the result is a contentious work environment.
Such a person will find other means of asserting his/her dominance; which in their mind will be an assertion of authority. Consequently, tensions become palpable followed by a rising of defensive walls culminating in a breakdown of communication.”
He further goes on to ridicule the academic credentials of the ED who he portrays as an illiterate who deserves not to be where she has been not only in the last three years but an entire career spanning over 30 years. Bellow, he writes;
“A brief perusal of the qualifications of the occupant of the top office at KCCA shall suffice to establish a premise for this article’s argument. I’ll spare you the details of the irrelevant primary and secondary levels results. She acquired a Pass Degree in Law from Makerere University in 1987 which was followed by a Diploma in Legal Practice from LDC.
One wonders what considerations are made for admission to this institute which ensures the quality of national legal practice. Anyways! Her Diploma was followed by two Masters’s Degrees to wit; a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership and Management from Uganda Christian University, and a Master of Arts in Leading Innovation and Change, awarded by York St John University, in the United Kingdom. As for her career before being appointed as KCCA ED, she had worked in several posts and positions which I must say are incredibly impressive. Understandably, one would look at that academic and career background and be awed by it.” The battle-determined author submits further.
He presents the impressive CV of Kisaka as being paper weight which s even misplaced, reasoning that someone better qualified among her subordinate staff should rather have been considered.
Having tried so hard to understand the cause of the anger in the author’s pen, a brief visit to the Wikipedia profile of the person under contention followed. Below is what can be seen;
“Kisaka was born in Uganda in 1964. After attending local primary and secondary schools, she was admitted to Makerere University, in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1987. She followed that by obtaining a Diploma in Legal Practice from the Law Development Centre, also in Kampala. She was then admitted to the Uganda Bar.
Her second degree is a Master of Arts in Organisational Leadership and Management (MAOL), obtained from Uganda Christian University, in Mukono, Uganda. Her third degree is also a Master of Arts degree in Leading Innovation and Change (MALIC), awarded by York St John University, in the United Kingdom.
Career
Immediately before her current appointment, she was a Senior Presidential Advisor deployed as Deputy Head of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister. From 1999 until 2014, she was an Associate Attorney at Kiyimba—Kisaka & Company Advocates, based in Kampala.
In April 2020, Yoweri Museveni, the President of Uganda, appointed Dorothy Kisaka as secretary of the COVID-19 Response Fund. Following interviews with the Uganda Ministry of Public Service, she assumed office as the second substantive executive director of KCCA. She was sworn in as the Executive Director of KCCA on 31 July 2020.” Truly impressive. Isn’t it?
The paid writer likens the city of Kisaka to a patient who visits a Lawyer to administer medicine to cure an illness. This is an effort to water down the impressive CV by suggesting that she should have been deployed somewhere less sensitive. Here, he states again;
“Indeed, one would conclude that she is overqualified for her task. Now, I’ll proceed to doubly and analogously illustrate why such a conclusion can be challenged. First, no man in his senses would let a lawyer operate on him; that is a task reserved for surgeons. Nor would I permit a surgeon to be my attorney in court and any man that would need a visit to a different kind of doctor. Second, no reasonable man, after hearing that the surgeon assigned to him has lost all but one of his patients in the operating room, would refuse the option of having a more qualified surgeon operate on him.
If he did, there would be more than meets the eye in that choice; perhaps a prior personal connection between him and the less qualified surgeon. It is in this respect that this article argues that the occupant of the top office at KCCA is underqualified; there were better-qualified individuals who, if merit had been the primary (as it should be) consideration, would have got the job instead of the person now in charge.” he opines.
Consequently, due to that aforementioned psychological phenomenon which informed a rather offensive attitude towards her co-employees, many people working within KCCA felt slighted by the conduct of the ED. Now, if the root is bad, so the fruit will be. It is alleged that hiring in KCCA is so irregular; manifesting as unqualified hires. Little surprise then that the work of the Authority has become a mess.” And a lot more.
One major absurdity here is christening the three years tenure of Kisaka as an outright failure. Whoever pretends not to see the beauty of Kampala in the last three years is a devil’s agent. We can go through a few highlights of Kisaka’s complex tenure that started in th3 middle of the coronavirus pandemic with the city under lockdown, with no budget and no tax revenue.
To begin with, there has been a steady improvement in revenue mobilization throughout the last three years. For instance, Shs 80.07Bn, 93.3 and 104.8 of the targeted 87.07, 99.75 and 99.75 respectively were realised in tax revenue for FY 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23. These represent a percentage performance of 92, 94, and 105 for the respective years.
Despite widespread concerns over the road sector, there has been plenty of work done by the refining at City Hall. One needs to remember that for two years under lockdown, there had been no revenue to work on roads which created a backlog. That means there should have been a significantly improved resource envelope to cover the gaps which, unfortunately, has not been the case as the institution’s budget has been cut down by 4.4% over the last three financial years.
Nonetheless, 56.03km of city roads were upgraded or constructed, while another 13.64km are currently being upgraded along with the rehabilitation of another 8.66km. KCCA is also undertaking the reconstruction/upgrading of 69 km of city roads with funding from AfDB under the Kampala City Road Rehabilitation Project (KCRRP).
400 km of paved road and another 800 km of unpaved roads have been periodically maintained and increased traffic junctions by an impressive 31% from 25 in FY2020/21 to 36 in FY2022/23. 17 junctions were signalized under KIIDP2 and the Government of Uganda.
Street lighting was also improved by expanding the lighting network(on the grid) by a whopping 535 lights while 395 non-operational street solar lamps were revamped to high-performance solar lights. 1,070 on-grid lights were upgraded to LED technology.
On traffic control, KCCA commenced the construction of a traffic control centre in December 2022 that will coordinate and improve traffic flow in the city junctions, reduce connection and improve pedestrian movement. The construction of the new old Park that covers 14,273 sqm was also completed under Kisaka’s stewardship.
Others are; the construction of markets, organization of public transport, city greening and landscape management that saw Kampala globally recognized by UN-FAO as the first African Green Tree City. 71,384 tree species have been mapped in the three urban divisions and are currently developing a tree management manual and database for the species and their historic value.
In public health, 45% of the construction of the Kiswa 60-bed maternity Ward HCIII, commissioned the Neonatal Unit with a holding capacity of 25 babies per day at Kisenyi Health Centre, installed the vaccine walk-in cold room at the KCCA records centre on 6th Street, Industrial Area, the list is endless.
With such a record, not even the dumbest person would afford to resist their reputation to paint the image otherwise, regardless of how much they are getting from the bad guys. We pray that as is always the rule of nature, good will prevail over evil this time too as we anxiously wait to see who comes in next at KCCA.
The author is a City Journalist for decades and a concerned citizen of Kampala.
Disclaimer: The opinions, views grievances, and statements made/expressed in the above article are not for the editor or administrators of this site.
