A police officer has penned an emotional resignation letter, saying he is quitting the law enforcement body due to persecution by his superiors.
Below is Constable Juma Batuka’s letter in full:
I am resigning from the police because of the torture I am facing inside.
I loved the police, and I have done a lot for them in my nine years of service. But I have reached the point of giving up.
I feel pain and suffering in my heart. The police will never appreciate the good things you do; instead, they will always fight to put you down.
I represented my country in the African Union Police (AUPOL) as an IPO and was deployed in Somalia under AMISOM in April 2021 for a one-year contract.
I performed well and was appreciated, and my contract was renewed for another three months.
I was congratulated by AMISOM and rewarded with medals and an Amisom certificate of recognition for peace and security in Somalia.
While in Somalia, I took a lot of courses from the United Nations.
I was cleared by AMISOM, and the UN flew me back to my country with all my documents in July 2022.
I was debriefed at Uganda Police Headquarters and given two weeks of leave before resuming my normal duties in Uganda.
Upon completing my leave, I was cleared by Police Human Resources Management and given a police message transferring me back to traffic headquarters for deployment.
But I was denied deployment. It’s now been 10 months of sitting at home.
The police are now appreciating me by putting cases against me and organizing illegal kangaroo courts against me, as if I were given medals and certificates for being an offender in Somalia.
One day, Dr. Lawrence Nuwabiine (Director of Traffic and Road Safety) told me that I went to the mission illegally.
Because I am a constable, no one listens to me.
They just chase me out of their offices at the headquarters, especially Afande Acaye and Rogers Muhairwe (Human Resources), who work for the interests of senior officers who are following us to destroy our future in police because they see we are performing well in police at this early age, and they start making wild allegations of misconduct against us.
Afande Muhairwe, you only listen to senior officers, not knowing that constables form the pillar of the force.
You’re always there in your air-conditioned offices; you don’t know what we go through in the field of our duties, and you always take the senior officers’ allegations as final.
No one wants to look at my papers, but they maliciously want to persecute me.
Afande Muhairwe told me, “I shall make sure you eat all that money you got from Somalia before I deploy you, and I shall remove you from traffic.”
Is it because I represented police in the African Union? I would like to know whether other medalists who represent their countries and come back with medals are treated like me.
I am really devastated as a young officer by how the Ugandan police are treating us.
Afande IGP I know all this is done without your knowledge, but I want to inform you that you send us as diplomats to represent police abroad, but when we come back, resuming our normal duties becomes a tug of war.
We are given harsh treatments and torture in our directorates, especially our directors, and yet ranked officers are deployed immediately and given more big offices and added ranks for rumourmongering on police constables.
A good commander or leader always listens to both sides of the story before making judgment. “A constable’s life matters in Uganda police”.
No. 62282 PC BATUKA JUMA
