EAC job mess

Kadaga’s angry response

Kadaga was riled.

In a swift reply to Mathuki sent on Oct. 18 titled,“Response to Request of Uganda for Postponement of Interviews for the EAC Organs and Institutions,” Kadaga said “it is fallacious for you to claim that you received my letter at 16:00Hrs.”

“I wrote the letter at about 1:30pm and the Permanent Secretary contacted both you and the Human Resource Manager immediately. The letter was from a partner state therefore you had no locus standi to respond. The letter should have been transmitted to the partner states of Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan.”

Kadaga said Mathuki is an employee of the partner states and cannot take decisions on their behalf or even take a position.

“The demand for the implementation of the Treaty and strict compliance with the established regulations cannot be dismissed casually as you purport in your letter. I would like to remind you Secretary General that in compliance with Article 14 (3) (g) of the Treaty, the Council issued rules and regulations in 2006, in particular regulation 4.6, which provides “At the beginning of each recruitment exercise, the Secretariat shall inform each partner state about her balance of weighted points.”

Kadaga added: “The operative word is “At the beginning” and this cannot be shifted to any other stage of the recruitment. I, therefore, reiterate my country’s position that there should be no interviews conducted unless and until all the partner states have been given information about the quotas and are therefore ineligible to participate in this exercise.”

Kadaga went ahead to remind Mathuki of the reasons for the break-up of the old East African Community in 1977.

“I further remind you that one of the reasons for the previous collapse of the old East African Community was disproportionate sharing of the benefits of the community among the partner states,” she said.

A day later, on Oct. 19, the interview exercise was halted.

A statement posted on the East African Community Secretariat website noted that the exercise which was scheduled for Oct.18 to Nov.02, this year, would be halted. The Secretariat said the interviews could not commence due to lack of quorum.

“The interviews have therefore been postponed to a later date that will be communicated accordingly. The EAC is committed to providing an equal opportunity for all East Africans.”

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