By Spy Reporter
Kampala: City Businessman Dr Robert Robert Rukaari, who is senior National Resistance Movement (NRM) cadre and the national chairman, Entrepreneurs’ League, has been accused of allegedly hatching a plot to make substandard COVID-19 face masks with intent to sell them to government.
The scandal comes after a whistleblower petitioned the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) Executive Director Dr Ben Manyindo, warning him not to be fooled by Rukaari’s shrewdness ‘advising’ that the standards agency should think twice before giving him license to make face masks, arguing that he doesn’t have the capacity and facility to produce the same, apart from satisfying his huge appetite for money.
The whistle blower’s petition received by UNBS on June 10, 2020, reads in part thus;
“FAKE PRODUCTION CENTRE:
I am a resident of Rwebikona Cell in Mbarara Municipality and a University student in Mbarara. On Friday 5th June, 2020, a one Mr. Robert Rukaari, through his agent, the Chairman of Rwebikona Cell, Mr. Kihogo, approached my mother among many others who is a tailor in Rwebikona Market for her of her tailoring machine at thirty thousand shillings (30,000/=) per day.
I have received credible information that the purporse of hiring tailoring machines from the community of Mbarara Municipality was intended to assemble these machines at the facility of Mr. Robert Rukaari in Rwebikona for purposes for purposes of passing a verification exercise conducted by your staff on Monday morning June 8th, 2020.
The purpose of this letter therefore is to alert you that the production centre purported to be in existence for the production of COVID-19 masks does not exist and the traders have already picked their tailoring machines back to their premises. Some were paid and others were not Paid.
It is not only embarrassing but unacceptable for a person in our party leadership and a national level to partake in fraudulent, corrupt activities to take advantage of government and taxpayers’ money…..”
However, although the Whistle blower’s petition comes at a time when President Yoweri Museveni recently announced that he had embarked on ridding government of all corrupt officials, neither UNBS nor Rukaari has come out to issue a statement about these allegations.
It should be noted that President Yoweri Museveni recently issued a directive to all Ugandans to wear face masks at all times as one of the ways preventing the spread of COVID-19 and ever since he issued the directive, several businessmen rushed into the production of masks for sale.
