The former Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) Executive Director Jennifer Musisi has been summoned by Parliament to explain accountability queries.
Musisi was summoned yesterday (Tuesday) when the incumbent Executive Director Andrew Kitaka and other officials from KCCA failed to satisfy the Parliamentary Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authority and State Enterprises (COSASE) on how KCCA spent over Shs19 billion in 3 years on litigation in courts.
In his 2016/2017 report, the Auditor General raised concerns on how KCCA had spent over Shs19 billion in legal costs and had over 30 cases within the same period of time.
The KCCA acting ED, Kitaka, who was flanked by the acting legal director Caleb Mugisha and other officials failed to satisfy COSASE in their explanations and now the committee wants Jennifer Musisi, who was the executive director by then (2016/2017) to come and respond to these concerns.
According to Mubarak Munyagwa, the Chairperson of COSASE, some of these costs could have been avoided had KCCA decided to settle the conflicts outside court.
Munyagwa cited an example of a case where KCCA was sued by a local newspaper over unpaid adverts last year. The then executive director Musisi refused to pay for the adverts saying that her office was not consulted when placing them in the newspaper. KCCA lost the case and paid over shs. 800 million in litigation, a figure which could have been avoided according to Munyagwa.
“The country has lost a lot of money yet some of these cases could have been avoided, We are summoning Jennifer Musisi to answer to these charges and she will respond to all of them when she appears,” Munyagwa said.
The committee however didn’t state the date on which Musisi should appear.
Jeniffer Musisi resigned from her position as Executive Director last year in December and now resides in the United States of America where she serves as a City Leader in Residence for the Bloomberg Havard City Leadership Initiative.