The Minister of Energy and Mineral Development Ruth Nankabirwa Sentamu has revealed that by now most parts of Uganda would be having electricity but some major challenges are hindering the distribution project.
Addressing journalists on the status of the energy sector at the Uganda Media Centre on Thursday, Nankabirwa said Uganda’s electricity generation capacity has grown from 60 MW in 1986, to 1,268.9MW as of June 2021. She added that although the ministry is trying to implement its mandate, the entire sector is facing several challenges hampering progress.
Among the challenges she highlighted is the Way leave Acquisition where she said that several electricity projects such as line extensions have been delayed or totally put on hold because of the issue of compensation.
“We trust that an amendment in the land law will consider this issue and provide public services like electricity the much-needed opportunity for a faster turnaround of projects.”
The former Kiboga Woman Member of Parliament also noted that vandalism of electricity infrastructures has also continued to cost the sector billions of Shillings.
She said; “As you are aware, in recent times the nation was plunged into a blackout (National power outage) because of selfish people who cut down power supply infrastructure. Others just cut down infrastructure out of malice and others to syphon transformer oil.” Adding that to mitigate this vice, the ministry has requested for the services of the army to guard key electricity infrastructures such as transmission towers and substations. This in addition to the amendment of the Electricity Act to criminalize vandalism of electricity infrastructure is hoped to tame the vice.
Nankabirwa further asserted that although the sector introduced the prepayment metering methods, they are still struggling with the challenge of power thefts.
“When we introduced prepayment metering, we moved along in reducing this vice. However, the vice hasn’t died out completely but with the establishment of the Utilities Court, several people have been arrested, prosecuted and jailed. I implore Ugandans to stay away from electricity theft. In several places, it has caused fires that have razzed down people’s homes as well as led to fatalities.”
The minister also revealed that the sector is also facing a challenge of limited funding since it requires heavy capital. “As you all are aware, the electricity sub-sector is a capital intensive one. Investment in this sub-sector requires hundreds of millions of dollars, making us compete for the national resources with the other public services such as health, education and agriculture support. In fact, it’s this capital-intensive nature that informed the government’s decision to liberalize the sub-sector to attract private capital as GOU concentrates on the provision of other services.”
She however appealed to the public that the government is addressing these challenges to ensure a reliable and equitable supply of energy to the people of Uganda.
“I appeal to the general public to support the Government in ensuring the development of power infrastructure by allowing us to go through your land. Any project delayed is the service delayed to the area the project is intended to serve. We also appeal to the general public to report vandalism to enable the power infrastructure to maintain its integrity to serve the intended purposes.”
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