Following of the emergence of Ms Jenifer Bamuturaki as the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, of East African Carrier, Uganda Airlines, revelations have emerged that the Government committed at least Shs890m ($7.5 m) on the search for a substantive Uganda Airlines CEO that never happened.
According to a report by monitor.co.ug, Multiple sources that spoke to the new medium but asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorised to speak about the matter, indicated that government had contracted PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to conduct the search at a sum ranging between Shs800m and Shs1b.
However, the job was last Tuesday handed to Ms Jenifer Bamuturaki, two days ahead of PwC’s July 8 deadline for receiving applications.
PwC had on June 24, published an advert in which it invited interested persons within and beyond Uganda to apply for the Uganda Airlines chief executive officer job, indicating July 8 as the deadline.
Monitor could not readily establish how many applications PwC had received by the time the job was given out on the instructions of Works Minister Katumba Wamala, who, quoting an April 24 letter from President Museveni, instructed the Uganda Airlines board to implement a directive to appoint Ms Bamuturaki as the substantive chief executive officer.
READ: Aviation: East African Carrier Uganda Airlines appoints Jennifer Bamuturaki as new Chief Executive Officer
PwC, citing client confidentiality, declined to comment on the matter, but sources indicated that at least more than 15 applicants had expressed interest in the Uganda Airlines top job.
Mr Uthman Mayanja, the PwC country senior partner, in an email last week, told Daily Monitor that PwC had “a long-standing policy of declining to comment on clients or the services that we may provide to them”.
“The purpose of this policy is to protect our independence and the confidentiality of our work, which is critical to the quality of services that we provide … in accordance with this policy, we are unable to respond to your inquiry,” he said.
It is not clear how PwC will proceed now that the board has been instructed to process Ms Bamuturaki’s appointment.
Mr Waiswa Bageya, the Works Ministry permanent secretary, at the weekend told Daily Monitor that government had hired PwC for a contract sum of Shs890m to among others search for the Uganda Airlines chief executive officer.
However, he noted, the Shs890m also included the search for other senior manager, who were sacked following months of suspension.
“The appointment of the CEO will now be done by the board up to the final end. We want to engage PwC so that it can appoint other people [senior managers]. There is one for safety, flight operations and others. They were going to handle this together [at] about Shs890m,” he said without giving more details.
Monitor could not independently establish whether PwC had been engaged in regard to the search for other senior managers.
So far, only a call for the chief executive officer job, which has been filled, had been published.
The search for a Uganda Airlines substantive chief executive officer begun in February 2020, before it was paused for unclear reasons.
Government had then selected Profiles International to conduct the search but it choose to redo the process last month and instead of advertising bid documents were sent to four firms including KPMG, Ernst & Young, PwC and another, before zeroing in on PwC.
