{UAH} *Mr President congratulations for messing up the country.*

Your excellency, I congratulate you for messing the country. Am your Muzukulu in the names of Muhimbise George. I call it a mess for lack of better words to use & congratulate you because am convinced that you have the capacity to transform this country but have deliberately refused.

The other day you visited a floating island at R.Nile which had distablized electricity & later resurrected the ghost of our Railway line when you promised to revamp it after nearly 30 years of oblivion. Since 2006 infrastructure development has taken a lions share of our budget much of it going to energy & transport sectors. These two make a basis of my article.

Currently we have total electricity generation capacity of 1360 MW  including grid & off-grid supply. It is expected to increase to 1800 MW when Karuma dam is completed. But even then, Uganda continues to have one of the lowest electricity consumption per capita in the world standing at 28% compared to Sub Saharan Africa average 42%.

Because people are poor, they don't even use the power for cooking. 85% of Ugandans use firewood to cook while 13% use charcoal, its only 2% that use electricity or gas. This 98% accounts for the glaring environmental degradation in Uganda. This degradation itself has had an effect on power generation. The last time i visited Mpanga Hydro power project which was designed to produce 18MW, it was producing only 3MW because of degrading R. Mpanga & its catchment area. Of the three turbines, only one was being used leaving others redundant. So the money invested into this dam may not come out because of limited generation; what a mess!

People can't afford power & resort to degrading the environment for energy,  yet accessibility or affordable power would stop people from degrading environment. You lose the dam because of environmental degradation & lose the environment because the dam can't provide affordable alternative energy, another mess!  The cost of power itself being too high results into rampant theft of electricity; another mess!

Mr President you talked about revamping the old railway & blamed traders who prefer road transport yet its expensive. In first place you would have apologized for having ravaged the old railway which you found functional. If you indeed had the will, you would have certainly found means of having it operate, even Amin never tampered with it! As you plan to revamp it, let me remind you that most of the land was grabbed, all the scrap rails stolen & sold with the watch, negligance or aid of your security men. Its public knowledge that one of the recycling plants that bought these machines is purpotedly owned by one of your many Presidential advisors; another mess!

When I checked in the National Development Plan expected to run between 2020 to 2025, i didnt see revamping this old railway as one of the priorities. Unless you do things haphazardly without following the plan, Isn't this another campaign lie for 2021 or its another mess?

Mr President allow me also to talk about the cost of these Infrastructure development projects. Karuma dam cost tax payers a whopping 1.7bn USD meant to produce 600MW.  In Ethiopia, Rennaisance dam on Blue Nile done in the same period cost 4.8bn USD & producing 6GH (6000 megawatts) ten times than Karuma. So Uganda will spend 2.8M USD per Megawatt while Ethiopia will spend 0.8M USD per megawatt, a big mess!

The inflated cost on infrastructure projects is the reason why standard gauge railway will remain a nightmare because your officials will need kickbacks. The project cost has to be as high as their appetite for free money. One would think that actually these projects are simply implemented as a conduit for plundering of public resources.

So Mr President,  you borrow huge loans from China, obviously at an exorbitant cost, this same loan money is given to a Chinese firm to construct a dam also exorbitantly. Take note that 80% of national works in Uganda are contracted to foreigners, so these Chinese employ their own people as experts, mechanics, consultants etc. If Ugandans are lucky, they can only have their daughters defiled  & made pregnant by the Chinese like it was on Kamwenge- FortPortal road construction. So they use Chinese technology, import Chinese machines & vehicles & construct for you a dam. Quality issues notwithstanding, this dam produces power where 90% of Ugandans  only use it for charging their phones. The rest of the power goes to Chinese owned factories who already operate under tax holidays offered by your government & subsidized loans from their government.

They sell the products to Ugandans & take back the profits to china which are again returned to Uganda as grants or loans.  They rob you with the left hand & donate leftovers to you with the right hand & you go on TV chest-thumbing how you have developed Uganda, grand mess!

Mr President, I see Uganda being mortgaged in the next few years like some African countries. The foreign & domestic debt has sky rocketed while you continue to take more loans that end in bottomless bellies of your government officials. One of your Ministers appear to have turned into middle man of foreign banks, his main pre-occupation  is to present loan requests to Parliament! 

Mr President i lost all the hope, when i saw your government plan to provide food to 1.5M people in Wakiso & Kampala, which they have also messed up.  I now doubt the statistics you give us during your speeches because If 1.5m people in the most developed part of the country (Kampala & Wakiso) are hands to mouth earners who don't have savings that can take them for a month lockdown & must beg for posho & beans from your government, then what other transformation can you talk about? Can you talk about prosperity for all any more? Can you talk of Ugandans earning 20m per year? Is there any more vote of no confidence in yourself than that Mr President? By the way do you think these will afford to pay rent arrears for two months lockdown when they couldn't afford 6kgs of posho?

In conclusion, the population should be empowered to produce & thus benefit from the infrastructure. The purpose of these projects should not be to facilitate exploitation by foreigners but rather help Ugandans to transform themselves. This can not come about miraculously but rather by deliberate efforts by a caring & responsible government not a messy one of Eyiniareemu!

Muhimbise George. 

0787836515,muhimbiseg@gmail.com.  

The author is a member of Publicity Committee of the Alliance for National Transformation

--
Disclaimer:Everyone posting to this Forum bears the sole responsibility for any legal consequences of his or her postings, and hence statements and facts must be presented responsibly. Your continued membership signifies that you agree to this disclaimer and pledge to abide by our Rules and Guidelines.To unsubscribe from this group, send email to: ugandans-at-heart+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ugandans at Heart (UAH) Community" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ugandans-at-heart+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ugandans-at-heart/CABfZXG1A%3Dg8ked4tFOMSD83-_iXTduHvZNnV2f-T6Kxd06tLug%40mail.gmail.com.