On Independence Day, there was a sad mood in Kisoga-Ntenjeru Town Council in Mukono District. This was because Livingstone Mutai, 48, the manager of Salama Estate for the Uganda Tea Corperation, had been tried to be killed.
Unidentified masked men on motorcycles allegedly stopped Mutai, who was driving a double cabin pickup with the registration number UAS 250D, and Bashir Kalungi, 52, a security guard in the tea estate, and opened fire on them on Saturday evening.The thugs hit Mutai, who hailed from Kenya, twice in the stomach and hit Kalungi in the legs.
An eye witness told URN on condition of anonymity that after disabling their victims, the gunmen moved closer to the vehicle and shot them again before removing a bag in the back seat containing an unspecified amount of cash. The Kampala Metropolitan Police Spokesperson, Patrick Onyango, says that the thugs made off with Shillings 40 million, which Mutai had picked up from the bank to pay workers’ salaries on Sunday morning.
There are more than 500 workers in Salama Estates who are paid every 14 days. The least-paid worker earns a daily salary of 6,000 shillings. Other estate managers didn’t want to say anything about what happened or say how the people who were shot were doing now.
But Michael Kajubi, the LC I Chairperson of Mpuma-Salama, where the accident happened, says that the victims were taken to Heron Hospital for first aid and then sent to Mulago Specialised National Referral Hospital for better care.
Kajubi says that it is hard for the community to protect itself from these thieves because they are used to people in plain clothes carrying guns and saying they work for the fisheries protection unit and forestry.
Barbra Nakimuli, one of the workers in the Estate, appeals to the management to deploy enough security whenever transporting money from the bank. She is now worried about how she will provide the school requirements for her children after missing out on payments.
Since security operations have been stepped up in the Mukono district, the number of armed robberies has gone down.