Former UEB employees run to court over transport allowances

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT  | At least 402 former employees of the defunct Uganda Electricity Board-UEB have dragged the government to court in a bid to recover transport allowances that were due to them when their contracts were terminated.

The applicants, whose application is filed on behalf of 1,117 other former employees, were laid off following the government restructuring program between 1998 and 2001. They state that as a send-off, each of them was entitled to terminal benefits and transport allowances of  600,000 Shillings for junior Staff and Shillings one million for Senior Staff.

They say that the company had committed to deposit the money within a space of four weeks after the termination, together with their terminal benefits. However, the applicants claim that they were shocked to discover in 2016 that although the government disbursed the money, it was never deposited on their bank accounts.

They reportedly decided to engage UEB through their lawyers on a number of occasions but their efforts didn’t pay off. The applicants say that on June 7, 2016, they wrote to the Director Privatization Unit, which is in charge of restructuring government parastatals but he didn’t respond to their complaint.

“The plaintiffs together with other UEB employees have tried in vain to obtain their transport allowance from UEB but all efforts have so far been futile as UEB continues to refuse to pay but only claims it paid without evidence,” reads the application filed before the High Court Civil Division.

They contend that the rest of their counterparts who transferred to sister companies created after UEB received their transport allowances and support their claim with pay slips of their colleagues who were absorbed by Uganda Electricity Generation Company Limited.

They say the failure by UEB to pay them for this entire time tantamount to fraud, which has caused them great loss. They now want the court to compel UEB, which is under liquidation to pay them their money, costs of the suit and damages.

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