By Spy Reporter
Kampala: Betty Nambooze Bakireke, the Mukono Municipality Member of Parliament, has named a company owned by a senior police officer’s wife as being behind the trafficking of hundreds of Ugandan girls into slavery in Jordan.
Nambooze revealed this is a statement she posted on social media over the weekend, in which she named Ruth Karungi, wife of Commissioner of Police Henry Tukahirwa, whom she alleged is the proprietor of Maphie International Recruitment Agency, a company responsible for allegedly selling several girls in Jordan, who are currently suffering the afflictions subjected to them by their slave masters.
Nambooze’s statement came shortly after government rescued several girls from Jordan where they had been sold in slavery.
Her statement reads thus; “The Air Dubai plane that touched down at Entebbe airport yesterday evening brought into Uganda more misery than the anticipated happiness. Dozens of girls who were trafficked to the Arab world as slaves were being returned to meet their relatives after a protracted battle which we started about two Weeks ago.
Parents wept on seeing their girls as some had to be wheeled off the plane in wheelchairs. The girls have broken limbs, bruised faces, scars …they are so skinny and sick. Yet these are the lucky ones as some of their colleagues are dead and or can’t be traced.”
She added; “Doreen Magezi one of the victims is the one who put through a distress call to me as her area MP. She was promised work by Maphie International Company of Kigowa Ntinda. Marphie advertises its self as a labour agency. It’s owned by One Ruth Karungi wife to commissioner of Police Henry Tukahirwa.
On reaching Jordan, Doreen was placed on a stall and sold to the highest bidder at $ 3000 and later handed over to a family that has been treating her as a sub- human. I raised this matter in Parliament and through this effort, Karungi was forced to return the girl, sick and shattered. My involvement saved some other girls who were in Jordan under the same arrangement. Interestingly these slave traders had attempted to force the family to pay back the $3000 before returning the girl…I told the family to leave the matter in my hands.
To display the highest level of impunity Karungi who raided Entebbe airport with might most probably through her husband ordered the airport Police to arrest Doreen on arrival and indeed they arrested her. On gun point a Police lady at Entebbe Airport made this girl to record a statement stating why she contacted me! It took my team up to after midnight to get the girl released and taken to hospital since she is in a bad state. These girls have been placed in various health centers amidst fear that they can be harmed by the traffickers since they don’t want them to live and tell the story.
By this post am calling on us all to fight slave trade….we can’t be so evil a Country, a country that in this 21st century sell off its energetic, educated young people into slavery.”
However, Ruth Tukahirwa Karungi, the Director of Maphie International Recruitment Agency, vehemently denied allegations of trafficking and selling Ugandans to Arabic countries. She has tasked Nambooze to produce evidence to substantiate her claims, saying they are always approached by poor girls for job placements.
