KAMPALA – The Director General of Uganda Investment Authority (UIA), Mr. Robert Mukiza, has dismissed allegations of mismanagement at the government agency.
Mr. Mukiza, who was responding to claims that UIA has mismanaged the Kampala Industrial and Business Park Development Project, said no amount of intimidation and character assassination will stop him from fulfilling his mandate of promoting the country’s industrialization agenda.
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“There is no problem whatsoever with the institution called UIA that I lead or the projects under it’s mandate. We are busy fulfilling our mandate of ensuring that we attract more investors as we keep the ones we already have happy and satisfied,” Mr. Mukiza said in a telephone interview.
“Why can’t they [accusers] submit the so-called evidence to the relevant investigative institutions in Uganda so that I disapprove them? They very well know that at UIA, we operate by the book, and there is nothing they are alleging that I can’t explain with evidence,” he added.
Mukiza was responding to reports from various sections of blogger media across Ugandan borders that UIA is mismanaging the Kampala Industrial and Business Park Development project, which aims to upgrade Namanve into a state-of-the-art infrastructure facility.
Numerous whistle-blower complaints about the project have been sent to the Attorney General, the IGG, the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority( PPDA), Parliament and the President, prompting investigations.
However, investigations have always found the complaints woring.
Mukiza said such fake news and propaganda are being propagated by groups of individuals to negatively influence public opinion against the government agency, its leaders and its projects.
“I already know how these fake stories are fabricated; who suggests which scandalising story about me enough to attract public interest should be written. I know who eventually types the stories, I know who approves them. I know how they are sent to online outlets, and I also know who contributes money to pay these websites to ensure that they are posted on different platforms to achieve the desired impact,” he added.
He explained that after failing to gain attention in Ugandan media, those spreading the false information have resorted to unlicensed bloggers in Kenya and DRC to spread the false news.
“I know who these people are and their devilish motives. It has always been a group of three, but recently, another renegade joined them, so they are now four. They have turned the fight against me into a full-time job,” he said.
“I have also heard that they have created anonymous websites in Kishasha, primarily to publish fake news about UIA and me. But they are extremely dense, crafty and myopic. If they are genuine in what they say, why then run to run 700kms to Nairobi or 3,000kms to Kinshasa to publish a story there moreover on a website that was created a few minutes before the story was published?” he added.
Mukiza further explained that the group has exhausted falsehoods about him and there is nothing left to write the reason they have now focused their guns on the new innocent victims, including individuals from the Ministry of Finance, the Attorney General’s office and the British High Commissioner to Uganda.
“These blackmailers know that these people are very innocent but they keep dragging them in their doctored news in order to keep the bad stories about me and the institution fresh, exciting and relevant to the public,” he said.
Mukiza expressed gratitude to Ugandan registered online news that have found out that stories about UIA and Namanve project are all fake and misleading and therefore not newsworthy and refused to publish them.
“Journalists in Uganda by now know that 100 percent of the negative news about UIA, its staff and projects are extremely biased and fake and I’m happy that they are no longer giving them attention as they used to; the reason why these evil people have run to Kenya to use the websites there,” he said.
Last weekend, the claims that UIA had mismanaged the development of
Mr. Mukiza appealed to the public to ignore the fake stories.
“ Those you see trending aren’t stories but rather individual opinions of my enemies. They are the ones who draft, type, edit and send them to the publications, so nobody should take them seriously,” he said.
