By Fred Kiva
Deputy Attorney General Mwesigwa Rukutana has advised Privatization Minister Evelyne Anite against firing UTL administrator.
In his June 28 letter, written in response to the Minister’s directive to the Attorney General to apply to court and remove the UTL administrator from office, Rukutana said Anite has no mandate to do so. “Accordingly a shareholder in this instance such as the Minister of Finance Planning and Economic Development has no locus to apply to court to remove the administrator from office,” he said.
“I would like to offer further guidance that the grounds for removal of the administrator from office, are provided for in Section 174(1) (c) of the Insolvency Act. They must relate to failure to comply with the duties imposed on the administrator under the administration deed, the Insolvency Act or any other law or any orders or directions of court,” Rukutana added.
Early this week Minister Evelyne Anite decided to drop the Registrar General of Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) Bemanya Twebaze, as the Official Administrator of UTL. In her letter to the Attorney General, Anite said government has encountered inconsiderable difficulty dealing with Bemanya and has lost confidence in his ability to serve the role of UTL Administrator.
However, Deputy Attorney General Rukutana told the Minister, “Your subsequent conduct and particularly this request undermines the ruling of the Rt. Hon. Speaker.” He went ahead to explain that similar issues were raised on the floor of Parliament on June 19 and “The Rt Hon. Speaker rightly ruled that administration is a counter-controlled process and neither the legislature nor the executive should interfere with the process.”
Bemanya was put in charge of administration at UTL in April 2017, when government decided to take over the Telecom Company management, to prevent it from collapse. This was after Lybian government which was a majority shareholder, through UCOM Limited decided to withdraw all its five directors and stop further funding to the Telecom Company.
