Amos Mwase, the former deputy director for Health and Safety at TotalEnergies Uganda, has lost his attempt to have his dismissal reversed after the High Court ruled that he had pursued the wrong legal process.
Justice Bernard Namanya dismissed Mwase’s application for judicial review without considering whether his dismissal was fair or unfair.
Instead, he agreed with TotalEnergies that the dispute should first have been handled through the company’s internal appeal process and Uganda’s labour dispute resolution system before being brought to court.
Mwase had worked for TotalEnergies for 13 years and rose through the ranks until he was appointed deputy director of Health and Safety in 2023.
He says that throughout his career, he had maintained an exemplary record and had never faced complaints about his performance or conduct.
That was until October 20, 2025, when, during a performance appraisal meeting of his junior officers, Jean Gift Kisakye, things took a turn for the worse.
Mwase said the meeting was attended by TotalEnergies’ senior managers, including Jean Milcent and Risk Manager Miaora Stroe.
He claimed the criticism angered Kisakye, and the meeting ended abruptly.
According to Mwase, shortly after the meeting, he met Kisakye in one of the office corridors, where she allegedly warned him: “I will get all of you for this.”
He said that shortly after the heated meeting, he proceeded on annual leave. While he was away, more meetings concerning Kisakye’s appraisal took place before he returned to work on November 5, 2025.
On November 12, he received an ethics alert from the organisation
The notice informed him that a member of his team had lodged a complaint against him and asked him to respond.
He was summoned to appear before the company’s Ethics Alerts Investigation Committee on November 18. The meeting was attended by Head of Legal Christine Byarugaba, Human Resources Director Christine Sekyana, Finance Director Alain Michel, and Compliance Officer Peter Ituka.
It was during that meeting that Mwase said he first learnt of two accusations against him.
The first alleged that he had sexually harassed Kisakye in violation of the company’s code of conduct, and secondly, they accused him of disclosing her confidential medical information and harassing her following an incident involving her mobile phone.
Mwase said he was shocked to learn that the sexual harassment complaint had reportedly been filed months earlier, in June 2025, but had never been brought to his attention.
He later received a letter inviting him to appear before a disciplinary committee on December 9, 2025.
Before the hearing, he submitted a written defence and also received copies of alleged WhatsApp conversations between him and Kisakye, which the company intended to rely on during the disciplinary proceedings.
Mwase says the disciplinary process was fundamentally unfair because TotalEnergies breached its own disciplinary code.
According to that code, serious misconduct is supposed to be reported within five days, yet the complaint had remained dormant for about six months before action was taken.
He also alleged that the chairman of the disciplinary committee made remarks showing that the committee had already decided he was guilty before hearing his defence.
To defend himself, Mwase obtained telephone call records from MTN Uganda, and the records showed normal two-way communication between him and Kisakye and did not support allegations that he had persistently harassed her.
After the disciplinary hearing, he was suspended, and on December 16, a senior manager informed him that a decision had already been made to fire him even before the disciplinary committee had formally communicated its decision.
Indeed, six days later, on December 22, he received his dismissal letter and was instructed to begin the clearance process.
He complained that the dismissal decision itself was communicated 13 days after the disciplinary hearing instead of within the five days required by company procedures and appealed internally on December 24.
Although the company acknowledged the appeal and promised to establish an appeals committee, Mwase later declined to attend the hearing, arguing that the appeal was only intended to “sanitise” an already unlawful process.
He took TotalEnergies to court seeking a judicial review of the decision and other declarations.
In court, Christine Sekyana, TotalEnergies’ Human Resources Director, said Mwase’s case had no merit and should be dismissed.
She explained that the ethics complaint had been formally lodged on October 31, 2025, after Kisakye alleged that Mwase had sexually harassed her between June 2024 and June 2025 despite her repeated objections.
Sekyana said Kisakye had first reported the matter to Human Resources in June 2025 but had initially chosen not to escalate it further.
According to the company, investigators collected supporting evidence, including WhatsApp messages, Microsoft Teams records, and telephone logs, before inviting Mwase to respond.
She insisted that the first committee only carried out a preliminary assessment before recommending that a formal disciplinary hearing be conducted.
Sekyana also denied that the disciplinary committee had been biased, insisting that the chairman simply informed Mwase that a complaint supported by evidence had been received and repeatedly gave him an opportunity to defend himself.
She said they did not ignore Mwase’s phone records from MTN, only that he chose not to hand them over directly to them, saying they contained information relating to other people. Instead, he gave them to his lawyers.
TotalEnergies was represented by Martin Jjuko, James Zeere and Ferdinand Musimenta of S&L Advocates, who gave three reasons why the firm was right to fire Mwase.
First, they argued, Mwase abandoned his own internal appeal after filing it. Second, they said under the Employment Act, he should first have reported the dispute to a Labour Officer before going to the Industrial Court if necessary.
Third, they argued that judicial review was unavailable because TotalEnergies is a private company rather than a public body exercising government powers.
Mwase, represented by Frank Nigel Othembi of Othembi & Co. Advocates, argued that pursuing the internal appeal would have been pointless because the disciplinary process had already been predetermined.
His lawyers further argued that the case challenged procedural fairness, bias and breach of natural justice rather than a simple employment dispute, making it suitable for judicial review.
They also submitted that TotalEnergies plays such an important role in Uganda’s oil sector that its treatment of employees was a matter of public interest.
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Before arriving at his ruling, Justice Namanya observed that Mwase had voluntarily lodged an appeal but later chose not to attend the hearing.
He said the Employment Act clearly requires employment disputes to begin before a labour officer.
“I find that [Mwase] ought first to have presented the employment dispute to the labour officer and, if necessary, thereafter pursued the matter before the Industrial Court,” he said.
Having reached those conclusions, Justice Namanya declined to examine whether the dismissal itself had been lawful or unlawful and dismissed Mwase’s application.
