Museveni blames poor planning, not lack of money, for hindering development in the oil and gas sector
UPIK is earmarked to be transformed into a Centre of Excellence for oil and gas related training. This is in line with the Skilling Uganda strategy and plan which strongly advocates for building centres of excellence to supply manpower for specific economic sectors.
President Yoweri Museveni has said the government has all the money needed to develop institutions like Uganda Petroleum Institute – Kigumba (UPIK) so that they can train Ugandans needed to work in the oil and gas sector to full capacity.
“I really want to tell you that the problem here is bad planning by the overall Government structure because this money that we are talking about, the USD32 million which has been invested is not such a big amount of money given the importance of Kigumba Petroleum Institute,” Museveni said Saturday while commissioning new infrastructure at UPIK.
He said Government should plan well and prioritise investing in lucrative projects that will generate billions of dollars for the country in a few years to come.
“The question is how many oil projects do you have? We have only one in Mwitanzige (Lake Albert) Valley. It’s the project we have that will give us billions of dollars in a few years’ time and it needs the support of training which we planned Kigumba Institute should provide that,” he urged.
“Why do we have a problem in funding it fully? I don’t see any problem with that. It’s not lack of money but lack of planning by the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development as well as poor oversight and all that. How could you fail to plan to spend money in order to get more money in a fairly short time?” he also wondered.
“Even if we are to spend USD 50 million, 60 or even USD100 million to make Kigumba Petroleum Institute a world-class training centre, we shall do it. We have the money. Yes, we have got very many needs, some want money to eat. We can constrain that. We can say stop travelling. Tell the civil servants, the MPs, the politicians to stop travelling abroad; money is being wasted in external travel and here Kigumba is crying for money！
President Museveni also disclosed that it was Uganda under the NRM Government that started the initiative of training people in petroleum in the whole of Africa.
“The people we sent abroad to train in petroleum are the ones who discovered oil here. They came and showed me on the computer. That is how they started now to look for these companies because we didn’t have the money to dig but already, we knew the location of the oil,” he said.
“If you have that history of pioneering, let’s also pioneer in this Education here by having a world-class petroleum training centre and later alone you can have other aspects of energy like the solar, biogas. We can add them later. So， please let us get the full plan. We shall support it because it is unique. You cannot compare it with external travel, allowances inside Uganda. We can freeze all that and have this, like we have done for other things.”
Located in Kiryandongo District, Kigumba Petroleum Institute, also referred to as Uganda Petroleum Institute or as Uganda Petroleum Institute, Kigumba, is a Government-owned, national center for training, research and consultancy in the field of petroleum exploration, recovery, refinement and responsible utilisation in Uganda.
