I am of the opinion that strategy number one should be to have Ministry of Labour as a distinct Ministry to see how to address the problems of employment. It is sad the way NRM has handled the employment problem, but they must know that it is a time bomb.
William Kituuka Kiwanuka
Workers House suicide woman was job-frustrated
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By Eddie Ssejjoba
The young woman who plunged to her horrific end from the Workers House building Friday morning was frustrated by futile job applications, her family has revealed.
Justine Nalugya, aged 26 was a 2007-graduate of Makerere University and spent her final five years (after leaving university) looking for employment, but with no success. There is impression that her frustration must have had the better of her and she decided to end her own life.
Her relatives suspect she was ‘disgusted with life’, which might have inspired her desperate suicide mission.
Nalugya dipped to her demise from the 14th floor of one of Kampala’s tallest buildings at about 11.15am and died instantly. Gloom instantly engulfed the area with workers and visitors within the building helplessly looking on as Nalugya’s lifeless body lay on the floor, head, torso and brain shattered.
One eyewitness said she saw the young woman prepare to jump. “She looked down as if she was waiting for someone to come up, then she threw down her bag and shoes then later, herself, head-first.”
Workers House security personnel said Nalugya first ascended to the 13th floor asking for a Wasswa but they told her they did not have such a person. She then went to the next floor, signed her personal details in the registry and was given a visitor’s card, but she instead went and stood near the balcony.
A few moments later, she was lying on the first floor, dead.
There was a big bang. Stunned workers and visitors a few feet away from the point of the deathly impact screamed upon seeing the body of the then unidentified person lying on the floor. They could not tell whether it was a suicide mission or accidental.
Security operatives struggled to restrain a stream of shocked onlookers and outsiders who scrambled to have a glimpse of the dead woman.
Police checked her small black bag and found her identity card and other documents that indicated that she was a resident of Kamuli Zone in Kireka, Kira town council.
Her relatives later were able to identify her body from Bukedde TV and reported to the police. The body had been taken to City Mortuary in Kampala from where the deceased’s relatives picked it and organized for her burial at Luteete in Luwero district.
Her brother, Ronald Kyobe, a resident of Nabweru in Wakiso district said his sister’s act upset the entire family. She lived with her mother, Robinah Kimuli and her 90-year-old grandmother, Miriam Kimuli in Naalya, Kira town council.
Her mother paid her tuition fees through university after her father’s death.
Nalugya briefly worked as a cashier at her uncle, David Ssentumbwe’s bakery in Mbarara district but it is not clear yet why she left the job and returned home.
Kyobe said his sister, who was always called by the name Julie, told him that she was going to meet a man she only identified as Wasswa at Workers House, that he had promised her a good job.
Others sources says Nalugya had made a similar appearance at the same building looking for the same man but in vain.
Nalugya’s grandmother described her as a clever child in class and had a lot of dreams to live a good life after school.
She had also promised to look after her [grandmother] in her senile age after getting a good job.
However, Kimuli explained, Nalugya had been living a distraught life after failing to realize her dream of getting a good job.
Relatives said Nalugya bid them farewell Friday morning and left on a bodaboda (commercial motorcycle) and were waiting for her return home in the evening. They were shocked to learn that she was the woman whose story was all over the radios and television channels.
The family neighbors said the deceased was an introvert and rarely opened up to other people.
Meanwhile, management of the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) said Nalugya was not a member of the fund and did not claim anything. They described her as a visitor who was looking for a person who was not known.
They said she used the northern gate entrance and deposited her ID card and was given a visitor’s tag number 103.
“She registered in the visitor’s registry at 11.00 am on the 14th floor. She thereafter proceeded to the western wing of the offices, took off her shoes and jumped over the guard rail, falling to her death,” the statement issued to the press stated in part.
“We wish to clarify that the deceased is not a member of the Fund. She does not appear in our records, nor had she come for membership registration,” the statement added.
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