When Umeme Limited’s annual general meeting sat recently at Sheraton hotel, they didn’t discuss the scandal surrounding the missing bulbs that were supposed to be distributed to households for free.
According to Patrick Bitature, the chairman of Umeme, discussing stolen bulbs was “a small thing.”
The Observer recently revealed that a team of police officers had pitched camp at the Umeme Limited head offices on Rwenzori House to investigate circumstances under which bulbs intended for free distribution ended up in shops in Nakasero.
In July 2015, Irene Muloni, the energy minister, flagged off the project with the intention of distributing over a million bulbs for free to Ugandans. Under the Shs 10bn project, families would exchange a single ordinary bulb for three LED bulbs, which consume less energy.
Bitature, who was responding to what the utility company had done about the incident, brushed it off as a small thing and instead said the exercise was done by government. He observed that in every project, there are wrong elements who try to derail a good cause but added that these would be dealt with.
“We did not discuss them [bulbs]. It’s a small thing. That exercise was done under Umeme but it was government’s plan to subsidise those bulbs. A few bad eggs cannot spoil the entire basket,” Bitature said. “This should not derail us from the majority of people who received those bulbs.”
According to what we have been told, at least 200,000 bulbs were recovered from the market and some of the suspects have been apprehended. Police spokesman in charge of CID, Vincent Ssekatte, told The Observer that the bulbs were procured in 2016 with the approval of the parliament’s committee on natural resources.
Umeme was directed by the committee to buy more than 700,000 bulbs, estimating that each bulb was to cost $4.2. At the current prevailing dollar rate of Shs 3,600, the 200,000 stolen bulbs translate into Shs 720 million. Since each household was to get three bulbs, more than 65,000 families missed out.
Umeme is said to have contracted electronics maker Phillips, which also sub-contracted their official Ugandan distributor, Kiboko Enterprises. Kiboko also contracted DAKS couriers as the main distributors.
Selestino Babungi, the managing director of Umeme, clarified that Umeme had taken all the necessary moves to ensure that the culprits are brought to book because it alerted police. He said that despite the challenges, they were successful and the benefits were big.
Commenting on the company’s performance, Babungi said more than Shs 1bn had been invested in the network, which had cut down on energy losses to 19 per cent.
Umeme recorded total revenues of Shs 1.3 trillion, an increase of 14 per cent.
“The manufacturing sector grew by less than one percent hence the slowdown in industrial activity. This is because we had elections. So, major industrial players withheld their capital investments or production schedules,” Babungi said.
Bitature attributed the ongoing power outages to global warming, saying that many power lines had been damaged by falling trees hit by strong winds. He said the company was doing all it could to ensure that there was uninterrupted power supply across the country.