President Yoweri Museveni has commissioned a 50-megawatt mobile power sub-station that will serve Sino-Mbale industrial park in Mbale district.
The function happened on Wednesday as Museveni took time off his campaign trail to commission the mobile power sub-station that will power the newly created 619-acre industrial park in Mbale.
According to Harriet Naluggya, the Senior Safety and Standards engineer at Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited (UETCL), the mobile sub-station will address power shortages in the industrial park.
“The industrial area has been experiencing power interruptions and their processes going down. This mobile sub-station will help address the problem,” Naluggya said.
The UETCL official said the mobile sub-station is only a temporary solution to the interrupted power supply to the industrial park in Mbale, noting that the permanent solution will be the sub-station whose construction is ongoing.
She explained that the mobile power sub-station, the first of its kind in the country is normally moved to areas, especially industrial parks with problems of insufficient power supply.
“This is for emergency solutions. The industrial park will be comfortable with this 50 megawatt capacity sub-station despite the demand being below 50 megawatts,”Naluggya said.
Mbale Industrial park
According to Kyle Feng, the Sino- Mbale industrial park administration manager, the park measuring 619 acres will house a chain of 80 factories.
Currently, there are 16 factories manufacturing bulbs, detergents, textiles and electric cables among others.
The industrial park is set to employ over 15000 people directly.
President Museveni has throughout his campaigns emphasized the role played by factories in the development of the country.
“The foreigners have helped us set up factories and create new jobs unlike before when Ugandans were used to government jobs. It is because of this wise decision that Mbale industrial park alone will employ 200,000 people here in Bugisu. We have more than 5000 factories whereas the tax we collect has increased from shs5 billion in 1986 to shs21 trillion. We are collecting tax which is 4,200 times more than we collected in 1986,” Museveni has always said during his campaign meetings.
He said because of the taxes, government can now fund most of its development projects like some roads without relying on loans and grants.
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