Posta Uganda Under Fire Over Shs 800M UCC Debt

Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) is set to attach the property of the Posta Uganda Managing Director, Andrew Arinaitwe as well as that of Posta Uganda should the company fail to pay the debt of over Shs 800 million which has accumulated over the years accruing from the remittances.

Appearing before Parliament Committe on Commissions, Statutory Authority and State Enterprises (COSASE), UCC’s Head of Legal, Abdusalam Waiswa said that the debt has accumulated since the financial year 2013 and in 2017 August when they entered a MoU where Posta committed to pay Shs 50m monthly which they have failed to abide by.

Waiswa explained to the committee that they agreed that Posta will pay Shs 50m monthly up to January 2018 failure of which UCC would take legal action including attaching the personal property of Managing Director, Posta Uganda and the property of Posta Uganda to recover the debt.

However, the Fred Otunu who is representing the UCC Executive director Godfrey Mutabaazi noted that Posta Uganda has been able to pay Shs 55 million of Shs 877 million initial debt since August 2017 when they signed the MoU.

This has irked the Members of Parliament (MP) accusing the commission of being incompetent because they have taken long to take legal action yet the MoU was already violated by Posta Uganda.

The committee Vice Chairperson, Anita Among directed UCC to provide the committee with the list of all that owe them money in addition to the details of how the debt was accumulated. She said that the Posts and UCC officials are expected to be summoned to the committee on Monday next week in order to settle the matter.

“We shall provide the committee with all the relevent documents on the reminders that we have sent to Posta Uganda over time as well as their responses. We are however still open to the legal proceedings,” noted Fred Otunnu.