The Chief Executive Officer of Uganda Airlines, Jenifer Bamuturaki is at the centre of yet another storm following a clandestine award of a 778.7 million service contract to Abbavater Group, a public relations media agency.
On April 4th, 2019 Abbavater Group signed a contract with the Uganda Airlines to manage the welfare (feeding and refreshments) of 600 guests during a ceremony to receive two newly acquired Bombardier CRJ900 aircrafts that arrived at the Entebbe International Airport on April 23rd.
Led by their Chairperson of the Parliament’ Public Accounts Committee of Parliament Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises – COSASE, Joel Ssenyonyi on Wednesday, the committee interacted with Bamuturaki to explain her role in the contract award to Abbavater.
In her response, Bamuturaki disclosed that earlier in March 2019, before she joined the Airlines, the then Uganda Airlines interim CEO, Ephraim Bagenda called and asked her to recommend ‘somebody’ to manage a launch event of receiving the new aircrafts, and she shared the contact of Abbavater Group CEO, Mark Odeke.
She explained that at the time she recommended Abbavater, she had not yet been hired by Uganda Airlines. But on April 4th 2019, Bamuturaki signed a contract with the Airlines to become the Commercial Director and Contracts Manager and started work on April 23rd, same year.
Her response was doubted by Muwada Nkunyingi, the Kyandondo East Constituency legislator who demanded to know why Bamuturaki did not commence her work immediately after signing the contract, and tasked Bamuturaki to reveal when she started getting her salary as staff. However, Bamuturaki said she could not recall the month.
Three months later, Abbavater Group signed a second contract worth USD 540,000 (about 2.097 billion Shillings) to promote and advertise the Airlines for a year. It emerged that the internal Procurement Department of the Airlines implemented selective bidding of three companies; Star Leo Advertising Agency, WMC Africa Limited and Abbavater Group for the purpose.
According to copies of bidding documents, the three companies WMC Africa Limited submitted a quotation of 35.2 million Shillings; Star Leo Advertising Agency (36.8 million Shillings), and Abbavater Group 174.8 million Shillings, lump sum per month respectively.
Ssenyonyi tasked Bamuturaki to explain why as the Commercial Director and Contract Manager of the Airlines, they chose to reward the contract to Abbavater whose quotation was inflated against the two other companies that offered to deliver the same service at a cheaper rate.
The Committee noted that the three Companies were erroneously selected because they were not even pre-qualified and therefore were not on the suppliers’ list for the Airlines, a practice that grossly flouted procurement guidelines.
Bamuturaki maintains she is innocent, but the Committee linked her to an affair with the Abbavater CEO, Mark Arnold Odeke, also a pastor in a church where by her own admission, the CEO is a flock. She was faulted for not declaring conflict of interest while signing the contract documents involving the media agency.
Bamuturaki is also facing another storm that relates to USD 12,750 (about Shillings 48.6 million) she received in June 2021 as per Diem for foreign trips that she eventually didnot make.
She was slated to travel to the Uganda Airlines offices located in Johannesburg (South Africa), Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo; Juba in South Sudan, Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, Mogadishu in Somalia, Zanzibar, Burundi; Kilimanjaro, Mombasa and the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
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