LETTER TO GEN M7: Uganda Railways needs a business leader not a careerist

Dear President Museveni,

I thank you very much for the decision of folding back these many agencies who had formed a corrupt government of their own outside the government as we know it. Thank you very much for this foresight. Some of us who have been around for a long time and know the efficiency of the civil service in the yesteryears including in the turmoiled years of the 1970s knew that agencies were definitely not the solution. The main civil service works well if lean, efficient and motivated structures with good leadership are put in place. During this rationalization debate of coffee in which I trade, my mind raced to Uganda Railways which is the heartbeat of my coffee business.
Uganda being a landlocked country, a railway to the sea would be an integral part of our economy. It would be the main highway on which the country operates. The construction of the Standard Gauge is welcome but why are we not utilizing the existing metre gauge, it is a shame! As we wait for the SGR, the country and indeed the world is not waiting, it is running very fast towards development. The existing line to Mombasa if well managed would reduce the cost of transport in and out of the country by more than 40%, reduce the hemorrhage of road construction and maintenance funds and generally improve the economy significantly. It deserves your attention, your Excellency. I have interacted with Uganda Railways Corporation (URC) as an exporter/importer for the last 35 years and suffice to say the corporation continues to go down the drain year after year unabated. The corporation offers no service at all, we just hang on because we are desperate. In the logistics business, our service priorities are three; timeliness, security and safety of the cargo and price of the service. URC offers none. Yet ordinarilythey would be the best in those three compared to road transport. Timeliness
is being sure when your cargo will get to its destination and not necessarily
the speed. With URC, you can never know when your cargo will arrive and
there is absolutely none to ask. It is very interesting that in this era of
technology, a manager would operate in stone age darkness. The cost of the
service is not any different from road transport, no wonder our roads
continue to be battered. The last service component to go was security and
safety of the cargo. With transshipments at the border with Kenya and
numerous derailments in Uganda, one is not sure how/whether their goods
will reach the destination and worse still URC offers no insurance unlike
other railways in the region. Uganda is a laughing stock in this regard
amongst regional players.
Mr. President, with a snapshot of the problems above (and this is just a tip of
the iceberg, the URC problems are many and wild), what then is the solution?
The solution is definitely not rationalization, in any case, the managers at
URC normally scapegoat their failings on their ministry supervisors. Every
time you ask why they do no have enough wagons, they will tell you a
Director at the Ministry is still negotiating with Kenya to return the wagons
and that is an excuse for 5 years.
The solution is putting seasoned business leaders in place to manage URC as
a business and stop the usual careerists (as you call them) or worse still civil
servants whose motivation is elsewhere as the ugly status quo continues.
The Corporation recently advertised a position of Managing Director in the
newspaper. My experience with their hiring process in the past is that the
Ministry normally gets hangers-on who simply continue in the business of
‘falling’ and failing the organization. They normally hire collaborators to do
the stealing with through their own appointed board. The last MD was found
to have no any university degree, no managerial experience and is currently
under prosecution for forgery of the same.
URC needs a manager who will focus on business growth, cut down on
opulent expenditure/wastage (new cars, trips abroad, thefts, etc) and
convince you – the government to invest in the railway with a positiveoutlook/figures not the current blind investments that are adding no value at all.
Your Excellency, it is high time you saved the country and especially us the transporters from this perpetual nightmare of a railway by hiring an experienced, competent and honest business leader to resurrect this national treasure. It is all about leadership. Make us proud!!

Your old friend,
Edward Nsubuga Kiwanuka Coffee Exporter & Businessman

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