{UAH} Isimba, Karuma and the Chinese debacle

People in this field by now, they woud have known that the money we spent on those two dams would have generate far more electricity if  as a country sought for an alternative!

Sometime  back in the 80's I found out that Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark has one school in dam construction, engineering and design. This college I was informed was the only one in that region since Sweden had the highest number of dams > 4000 among those countries which dams were used to generate electricity for the timber industry.

I wrote in such forums than that we should do exactly the same thing but to no avail!

How many experienced Dam Construction Engineers does this country has beside Engineer Hilary Obaloker Onek and may be Engineer Simon D'Ujanga

When I came back to Uganda I was thoroughly horrified with the quality of goods that were poured on Uganda market from China. Some could not even be used for an hour after being bought - I started mistrusting the Chinese

A friend of mine has been travelling to China to guide them on urban planning issues. That surprised somehow since these are people who have the money to do a lot of research.

The goods China produces are designed in Europe and produced in China under patent rights. Akanga knows a bit about of such out lets in Europe - Bil Tema and Clas Ohlson

There are many more of such companies in Germany Bosch etc.

This raises so many questions – about the state of our nation, policy maker's state of mind and where the country is headed with these chinese project donations and laxity and corruption within Uganda institutions!

Bwanika

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How Energy officials lost fight for Karuma

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A journalist photographs a section of the cracks at Karuma hydropower project last week. PHOTO by STEPHEN OTAGE 

By IVAN OKUDA

Posted  Saturday, April 16   2016 at  01:00

In Summary

Crisis. There have been allegations of money changing hands.

Kampala. Before President Museveni fired ministry of Energy officials for alleged neglect of duty over the multimillion dollar hydropower projects at Karuma and Isimba, a lot of dirt had occurred in the ministry and hostility had driven the staff to the verge of tearing each other apart, Saturday Monitor has learnt.

After suspending the implicated ministry officials, President Museveni also ordered radical changes to refocus the direction of the two power projects to avert collapse of the venture.
Saturday Monitor has learnt that before the President intervened, top officials manning the Karuma and Isimba projects had ceased seeing eye to eye as tension, intrigue and ego raged. The line sector minister, Ms Irene Muloni, formerly working with the defunct Uganda Electricity Board, had been kept in the dark as the bureaucrats ran the show and let Sinohydro, the Chinese firm constructing the 600 Megawatt Karuma dam, carried on with shoddy works despite red flags raised by Energy Infratech, the consultant and engineer overseeing the two projects on behalf of the Uganda government.

The friction over the projects started bubbling as early as mid- 2014. Around that time, senior officials from Energy Infratech approached this newspaper with a host of correspondences detailing inaction by the ministry of Energy even as they raised what they called, "make or break" queries pertaining to the construction that started in 2013. For lack of supporting documentary evidence, the story could not be published, pending further investigations.
Last month, the same officials made a desperate call to this newspaper to interest itself in the same issues, this time with a view to looking into how UEGCL hired two extra consultants (SMEC and AF Consult) to supervise the same construction sites and again, the Energy ministry's habitual silence despite the persistent raising of the red flag.

There were allegations of money exchanging hands and political intervention overriding professional duty. When our reporter put the issue of suspicious procurement to UEGCL's attention, a Pandora's box was opened, with the firm now exposing a conspiracy of silence between the Energy ministry and the Chinese contractor on issues pointed out by both UEGCL and the government consultant. By this time matters had run out of hand. UEGCL officials met Mr Museveni mid-last month at State House Entebbe to contact him as the arbiter of last resort. They laid bare the evidence of shoddy works at the two project sites unabated and implored him to exercise his executive authority and rein in the Energy ministry officials. In this meeting sources who attended described Mr Museveni as getting "alarmed and furious."

Subsequent to the meeting, Mr Museveni wrote to the Energy minister on March 22, revealing that he was disturbed by the information about the rot on the power projects.
In the letter to Minister Muloni dated April 5, Mr Museveni ordered the suspension of Engineer Paul Mubiru (director energy resources), Eng. Henry Bidasala Igaga (Project director, Karuma), Ms Cecilia Menya (Project coordinator Isimba) and immediate investigation for neglect of duty. He also ordered that the contract administration powers be transferred from the ministry to UEGCL, a matter that was at the heart of the conflict between the two entities.

"Most of these shortcomings have been raised repeatedly by the consultant (referred to as Owner's Engineer) in the numerous communications to the contractor in 2015; these communications to the contractor were always copied to the ministry but no decisive action has been taken to address those issues," Mr Museveni charged in the three-page letter to Muloni and copied to the Vice President and Prime Minister.
However the letter is silent on whether there is a role which Mr Kabagambe Kaliisa, the permanent secretary who is the ministry's overall accounting officer, should have played in the whole affair or not.
Mr Museveni's letter came two days after the April 2 three-part investigative series in which Daily Monitor chronicled the mess at the two power dams which are slated to be commissioned in December 2018.

In our last series entitled, "Energy officials ignore warnings on Karuma" this newspaper exposed how top bureaucrats at the Energy ministry had ignored at least 850 emails and letters from Energy Infratech Ltd, the Indian firm supervising the two dams on government's behalf.
"When I observe non-compliance I notify the ministry and the contractor; I cannot get kiboko (whip) or hire hooligans or an AK-47 [rifle] and put the Chinese at gunpoint for not following my advice. That is where the ministry must intervene and I have written 1,000 plus letters which they have ignored! What should I do? Who is not playing their role?" Mr Velusamy Vasu, the Chief Executive Officer of Energy Infratech, had said in an interview.

The construction of the 600 Megawatt dam at Karuma and 183 MW dam at Isimba nearly got derailed by palace politics and wars of ego between the ministry and UEGCL, the implementing agency and eventual owners of the projects. In one such clash, Eng Paul Mubiru, who has been suspended, wrote an angry letter to Engineer Harrison Mutikanga, the UEGCL boss, questioning his competence on projects of that magnitude.
"If you were asked how many dams you have supervised in your engineering career, don't you think the answer would be embarrassing?" Eng Mubiru charged at Eng Mutikanga in the letter.

Incidentally Mr Mubiru sits on UEGCL's board where Mutikanga is a secretary but in the avalanche of communication seen by this newspaper, he questions UEGCL's intervention in the projects. He reminds them he doesn't report to UEGCL and it must leave the dams to the Energy ministry which signed the contract with Sinohydro for Karuma and China Water and Electric for Isimba.
Mr Mubiru further watered down complaints UEGCL had raised against the consultant. He reminded UEGCL that the Indian firm had no contract with them but the ministry. As this channel froze, UEGCL sought Museveni's intervention. A source at the ministry said: "The minister didn't give leadership as she was out of office virtually all year campaigning for her MP seat and was kept in the dark."

Minister Muloni told this newspaper of Thursday in an interview: "Since you have the information (about the suspension), why don't you go with what you have? Why don't you let me do my work? I don't want to work through [Daily] Monitor. Give me time to concentrate, please."
Engineer Bidasala on his part said, "I am doing a lot of things. Why don't you just spare me please? Kindly spare me" and hang up.
The last two weeks have seen Ms Muloni chair crisis meetings at the ministry head office in a fire-fighting attempt to reverse the mess at the dams. In the meetings, one of the source who attended but was speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "the minister was virtually reading things in the press, including vital documents like the MOU for the first time."
Following the President's demand for prompt action in his letter, Ms Muloni went on a fact finding tour of Karuma dam on Monday and Isimba on Tuesday last week.

 

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Bwanika Nakyesawa Luwero

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