KAMPALA– Makerere University has been dragged to court for allegedly refusing to re-instate and promote Dr Stella Nyanzi as per the orders of the Staff Appeals Tribunal.
In a suit filed before the High Court Civil Division, Nyanzi claims that on two occassions, the University’s staff tribunal has lifted her suspension and made orders which the university has refused to implement.
She claims that the orders included her re-instatemate to her office as a research fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research, payment of her salary, benefits and emoluments due to her by virtue of her employment with the university and considering of her long overdue application for promotion from the post of Research fellow to senior research fellow which has been ignored.
“On October 23, 2018 through my lawyers, I registered my frustration, disappointment, dissatisfaction, irritation, anger and annoyance with the unjustified, unexplained, inexcusable, unacceptable and contemptuous failure of the respondent’s appointments board, director of human resources, director of legal affairs and MISR to implement the decisions and orders referred to above, and purges itself of the contempt of the orders of the Tribunal by implementing them without further delay,” reads part of the court documents.
Nyanzi says that there is no response to her letter despite the fact that its receipt was acknowledged by the University Secretary and the directorate of legal affairs on October 23, 2018, and the director of human resources.
Nyanzi a mother of three school-going age, an accomplished medical anthropologist and a post-doctoral researcher says she needs her job because of her responsibilities.
Through her lawyers of Centre for Legal Aid, she wants a declaration failure or refusal by Makerere’s officers and staff to implement the orders of the staff appeals tribunal within the ordered time is illegal, unjust, discriminatory and amounts to abuse of power and misfeasance in public office.
She also wants an order of mandamus compelling the university to comply with its statutory duty and implement orders and also be given general, aggregated and punitive damages.
Nyanzi was last year indefinitely suspended by the vice-chancellor Prof John Ddumba-Ssentamu on the orders of the appointments board chairman Bruce Balaba Kabaasa for attacking the First Lady and education minister Janet Museveni on Facebook over ‘incompetence to run the ministry.’
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