Investors operating in the Namanve and Mbalala industrial parks met with officials from the Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited (UETCL) and the Uganda Electricity Distribution Company Limited (UEDCL) on Friday to demand urgent intervention following the vandalism of two major transmission towers. Officials later inspected the damage to assess the scope of the outage.
The power blackout has severely disrupted production across multiple industries. Sam Mukisa, Human Resource Manager at Landy Industries Limited, said the company is incurring substantial losses, particularly during the high-demand festive season.
“Our machinery is too heavy to run on generators, and our workers who earn daily wages are idle. The impact is growing by the hour,” he said.
Gavrav Dwived of Tembo Steels Limited, one of Uganda’s largest industrial power consumers, noted that steel production has been significantly affected.
“We request government to restore supply immediately and reinforce security on the transmission lines to prevent a recurrence,” he said.
Other factories, including Brave Industries Uganda Limited, reported secondary effects such as water shortages caused by the power cut, while pharmaceutical firms like Abacus said production of critical drug orders has stalled.
Eng. Protaze Tibyakinuzi, Chief Engineer for Technical Services at UETCL, confirmed that two major transmission towers were vandalised, cutting supply to facilities including Tian Tang, Kampala Cement, Quality Plastics, Landy Industries, the Katosi Water Project, Mpoma, Mbalala, and Tembo substations.
Technical teams have been deployed to restore supply around the clock.
UETCL Managing Director Paul Mwesigwa described the damage as “devastating,” estimating that industrial parks consume about 16 million units of electricity monthly, with at least 4 million units lost during the outage—translating into billions of shillings in lost revenue.
UEDCL CEO Richard Matsiko appealed for calm, assuring investors and residents that restoration is underway.
“We have mobilised adequate resources, and supply is expected to be restored by early next week,” he said.
The towers were vandalised on Wednesday night in an incident that led to the death of one suspected assailant. Since then, large parts of Mukono and Buikwe districts have remained disconnected from the national grid.