Engineer Ssemitala cited in the UETCL sh54bn Scam
This is an exposé detailing how the MD of NS Engineering Associates, a one engineer, Robert Ssemitala deceptively bagged the lucrative deal of lighting the Kampala Metropolitan area.
Below is a saucy narrative of how the scam played out:
In 2018, Ssemitala’s contacts in UETCL informed him about the availability of the deal dubbed Kampala Metropolitan Project.
The deal was too good to pass on telling from the amounts of cash involved.
Unfortunately, Ssemitala’s CV wasn’t good enough as to convince the UETCL contracts committee to hand him the complicated power deal.
Ssemitala and his godfathers in UETCL, on the other hand, wanted the deal badly. They wanted the deal so much that they were even ready and willing to land the job by hook or crook.
But, given that Ssemitala’s competence and work experience wasn’t measuring up to the job, the group now went down to work on how to skirt the roadblock (wanting CV) on the way to landing the contract.
Ssemitala kicked off the deception by cunningly approaching a seasoned electrical engineer in town for purposes of convincing him to surrender his CV to him.
Ssemitala was asking for the CV under the guise he was going to secure the contract for the owner of the document.
Tempted by the possibility of landing the money-spinning deal, Engineer Nathan Magoba innocently handed Ssemitala the CV.
Now that the super CV was firmly in his hands, Ssemitala rushed off to plot with the help of his equally fraudulent contacts within UETCL how to bid for the contract himself!
The cartel agreed among themselves to subtly list the owner of the CV as part of his(Ssemitala) team of experts. And thereafter, to enumerate the genuine CV owner’s credentials in the bidding documents as belonging to Ssemitala!
Done with the deception, Ssemitala handed in his bid. And just like that, he ended up convincing the UETCL contracts committee to hand him the contract!
” Ssemitala subsequently won the tender evidently with the aid of my credentials, but he covertly cut me out of the job,” Engineer Magoba weeps.
The MD of Kaizen Engineering Firm is now demanding for sh500m fine from the colleague who fooled him.
Magoba realized Ssemitala had undercut him after receiving a phone from an acquaintance. Engineer John Bukenya was calling to ask Magoba why he had skipped a very important meeting pertaining to the job.
“When I pried further about the job,” Magoba continues, I realized Ssemitala had actually used his CV to further his selfish interests and not to secure him a job which was the purpose Ssemitala had intimated whilst requesting for it!
Magoba emphasizes he gave Ssemitala the CV not to use as he pleases but to secure him a job.
By switching the CV, Magoba reasons, the engineer acted unethically and unprofessionally as well as criminally.
He submits Ssemitala engaged in this deception to mislead the UETCL contracts committee to believe he( Magoba) was either a contractor working with him(Ssemitala) or that he ( Magoba) was a mere employee of him (Ssemitala)!
Upon learning of the scam, Magoba wrote to Ssemitala on February 25, 2020 hoping he would be amiable to righting the wrong.
” To my utter shock and dismay, Ssemitala wrote a conceited and insensitive response,” Magoba quarrels.
Ssemitala’s lawyers of Mbeeta, Kamya and company advocates informed Magoba his CV was of a non-key expert who was never evaluated during the bidding process in the contract award!
The lawyers callously retorted further that their client reserved the right to replace or substitute Magoba’s name and that his CV was a mere puff or invitation to treat!
Magoba states that Ssemitala’s lawyers erroneously stated that his CV was not intellectual property and that the tort of passing off he was threatening to press against their client was alluded to out of context.
“With due respect, the lawyers totally misconstrued the tort of passing off. This is not an infringement of intellectual property rights,” Magoba’s lawyers known as Kawalya and company advocates illuminate via a lawsuit they have since filed at the commercial section of the high court.
They go on to clarify how the tort of passing off stands on it’s own. That it arises in instances where one conducts his business in such a way as to mislead the public into thinking that one’s goods or services are those of another business.
The lawyers further educate how passing off isn’t restricted to intellectual property rights or to goods, but it extends to services, and it can entail a name, a design, packaging, get-p, services offered et cetera.
Ssemitala operates from Mukwano Courts opposite Hotel Triangle along Buganda Road, a little after Buganda Road Chief Magistrate’s Court.
The colleague he fooled is the MD of Kaizen Africa Engineering firm, which has credibly undertaken a number of big contracts here in the region and beyond.