TIME HAS FINALLY RAN OUT FOR UGANDA’S CAA BOSS
(Posted 30th March 2017)
‘He and many others should have been fired the moment they killed Air Uganda. That was a low point in Uganda’s aviation history and marked an abyss in relations between the industry and the regulators‘ commented a regular aviation source from Entebbe on the breaking news that Dr. Rama Makuza has been dismissed from the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority.
Makuza was reportedly given his sack notice by the Minister of Transport and Communications on recommendation of the Board, which found his performance wanting and decided he needed to go before his contract expired at the end of the year.
Capt. Mike Mukula, a former airline pilot turned politician, minced no words when commenting: ‘There has been a decline in Uganda’s Aviation sector compared to our regional neighbours in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda and I am happy about the board’s decision‘. Mukula repeatedly saw himself at the receiving end from the UCAA and time and again took issue with the organization’s decisions when he strongly disagreed with them, but several of the CAA’s top team habitually ignored private sector input and stayed aloof, though other ‘victims’ described them as arrogant, ignorant and to some extend even incompetent.
There have been repeated calls to also clip the CAA’s wings and remove from them the management of the airports as is seen as international best practice, where the regulators are no longer involved in the management of any facilities and elements of the aviation industry but remain solely in a regulatory role. However, given the ongoing massive investment projects for Entebbe and other airfields in the country, has the UCAA resisted this change, leaving Uganda as the only major country in East Africa without a dedicated airports authority and related bodies. ‘This is a joke and the appointing authority surely must see the error of their ways. How can the CAA hang on to a regime which has long been discarded in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda? It raises all sorts of questions what vested interests exist within the CAA especially when they talk of hundreds of millions of US Dollars in coming investments. This stinks to heaven and therefore is one sacking simply not enough, a whole lot of others also need to go‘ added another regular outspoken source on condition of anonymity.
Former staff of Air Uganda too expressed their satisfaction that the top manager at the UCAA was sacked but demanded that others must follow, especially those involved in the killing of Air Uganda at the time, in the words of one ‘to save their own sorry a***** at the expense of our industry in general and our company in particular‘.
Dr. David Kabuka has in the meantime been appointed as Acting CEO of the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority.
