Museveni axes 152 aviation staff linked to corruption

President Yoweri Museveni has fired 152 Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (UCAA) employees following a chain of events that exposed systemic corruption and the deep-seated issue of unqualified staff within the critical government entity, reports PML Daily. What began as an embarrassing, yet seemingly minor, incident – when Maria Nyerere, wife of the late Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, was trapped in an archaic airport lift – ultimately pulled back the curtain on years of alleged malpractices. Museveni directly linked the lift malfunction to broader organisational failures. ‘I have received information that there is massive corruption in the UCAA in terms of several aspects, including recruiting unqualified people for employment there,’ he wrote in a letter to General Katumba Wamala, the Minister for Works & Transport. ‘As a consequence, serious inefficiencies cause problems that must not be allowed to continue.’ He said after the Nyerere incident, an investigation was carried out and 152 unqualified staff were identified. ‘All these must be sacked, and so should those who recruited them.’

The Presidential intervention comes after internal probes and growing concerns that had been simmering within the UCAA for some time. Initiated in February 2024, nearly a year before the Nyerere incident, a staff academic qualification verification exercise found that out of more than 2 600 documents examined, 82 were identified as forged academic credentials. The UCAA report, submitted to Wamala, detailed that the internal audit was spurred by earlier findings during a November 2023 recruitment drive for aviation security staff, where ‘forgeries’ were detected among ostensibly qualified candidates. This discovery prompted the broader review of existing staff qualifications, according to PML Daily. The UCAA conceded that verifying academic qualifications had not been a consistent practice during recruitment or internal promotions, with the focus largely on aptitude assessments and industry-specific certifications. Beyond forged documents, the UCAA has recently faced public condemnation over allegations of extortion. In January, widely circulated social media videos purportedly showed staff demanding money from travellers, leading to calls for their prosecution from the Deputy Speaker of Parliament.