The top job at Uganda’s CAA! | By Amos Wekesa.

Last evening some guys were talking about how people were lobbying so hard for Uganda’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) top job and my heart sank.

CAA is the government agency responsible for licensing, monitoring, and regulating civil aviation matters and if we miss the train this time round, our only airport Entebbe will never see the desired change. We shall remain explaining ourselves and giving excuses.

An airport is the place where our guests and tourists get an opportunity to form an opinion of a nation….people have very horrifying experiences at our airport because of poor management. Not again!!

Anybody lobbying so hard for a public job is looking for something else, not to improve anything.

Fellow Ugandans, we aren’t competing with ourselves, we are competing with the rest of the world and anybody we entrust with civil aviation must be very exposed first before qualified. He or she must understand how the rest of the world works.

After Indaba South Africa last Monday aboard Rwanda Air we landed in Lusaka, Zambia and two Nigerian guys say, ” this airport of Zambia is as terrible as Entebbe airport!” My heart sank.

One guy then said, Zambia is finishing building a world class airport to be opened soon. I had a T-shirt written on Uganda!! I thought about Uganda deeply.

Lets not politicize management of our airport, we need to have quality people to run our airport.

MEDIA HOUSES, you can play a role in just showcasing those running JKIA, Kanobe, Dar airports for people to understand. I don’t believe Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni is aware, lets shout loud now, and blame him later. Let him be aware.

Tomorrow I will write about who is running Kenya’s tourism, Rwanda tourism and Tanzania so that we can think deeply about our future.

Its wrong for one company like Leopard in Tanzania or Pole man in Kenya having more departures of tourists to National parks than all Ugandan tour operators combined – myself included.

We live once on this earth and therefore, lets influence right thinking. Lets avoid politics but focus on reality.

Amos Wekesa CEO of Great Lakes Safaris