|
![]() ![]()
|
|
CLAIMANT: Natukunda with
her six-year-old daughter Sharan Nkashaba
|
MS Allen Atukunda,
a primary teacher, has asked the Uganda Human Rights Commission for an order
to attach the earnings of Col. Kahinda Otafiire to cater for her two of their children, reports Solomon Muyita.
Atukunda, 30, a teacher at Wagawaga Primary School in Mbarara,
told the Commission tribunal she had an affair with Otafiire,
water, lands and environment minister, since 1997, till 2001 when the latter
denied paternity of the children.
“I first took the matter to FIDA and I was advised to go for a DNA
test. The results indicated that Otafiire is 99.99%
the biological father of my children,” she told Commissioner Mariam Fauzat Wangadya presiding over the matter.
She said their affair had been on and off since her first pregnancy that bore
six-year-old Sharan and Elshadai
aged two. She came in company of Sharan for the hearing
where neither Otafiire nor his lawyer, Julius Kiirya, showed up.
“After my second child, he rang me and told me not to tell him anything
to do with children. That’s when he started mistreating me with the
children, dodging us all the time. Getting school fees from him has always
been a long struggle,” she said.
Yesterday’s hearing was in public, after Otafiire
failed to honour an agreement he entered with Atukunda on January 13, when Kiirya
applied for the case to be heard in camera. Otafiire
undertook to provide the children all the necessary maintenance including
clothing, medical care, shelter, food and education, by sending a monthly sum
of sh150,000. Atukunda,
whose testimony was led by the commission advocate Cissy
Kagaba, told the tribunal that Otafiire
breached the agreement when he failed to pay sh900,000
to her to cover six months.
Ends
Published on: Tuesday, 3rd February, 2004
|
