Puzzle of Kicking Out Inefficient Umeme and Committing Public Funds to Purchase Inefficient Electro Maxx
The government has already served power utility provider, Umeme with marching orders at the end of its concession running out by December 30, 2025.
The government has already served power utility provider, Umeme with marching orders at the end of its concession running out by December 30, 2025.
The government accuses Umeme of many bad things chief of which is inefficiency in the provision of power to Ugandans.
The other thing Umeme stands accused of is that charging exorbitant tariffs which has made power very expensive and hence out of reach for many Ugandans.
Yet Umeme doesn’t set prices for power. It’s the government instead, truth be told, which prices power through its own agency known as Electricity Regulatory Authority(ERA).
But whichever the case, whereas the government is set to kick out Umeme on the grounds of inefficient and extortionate services, the same government is set to use public funds to buy out even another arguably worse-off inefficient and extortionate private power firm known as Electro Maxx.
Coincidentally, the owner of Electro Maxx, Patrick Bitature is also the chairman board of directors of Umeme. See!
Even more revealingly, both Umeme and Electro Maxx are being accused of inefficiency as well as providing services at extortionate prices. See!
Oddly, though, at the same time as the employer is set to send packing one of the inefficient and extortionate employees, is exactly the same time also that the employer is plotting to use public funds to buy out the other also the inefficient and extortionate employee.
And therein lies the mother of all follies, the mother of contradictions of all contradictions plus the mother of nepotisms and favoritisms of all nepotisms and favoritisms.
Contemplate. Retained by the government of Uganda to help to light the West Nile region, not only Electro Maxx has been struggling to do what it was contradicted to do, but such inefficiency has since been duly communicated to both the employer and the national assembly.
So much that the employer has since saved the situation from going to the dogs completely by connecting the region to the national power grid.
Yet other than sending home the inefficient employee, just as the employer is set to send home the so-called inefficient Umeme, alas, the same employer is, on the contrary, set to reward the inefficient Electro Maxx with a buy-out deal and by using public funds! Imagine!
For the record, Bitature is one of President Yoweri Museveni’s besties. Naturally, the president wouldn’t want his bestie to suffer. This would possibly explain why the president is ready and willing to go out of his way to help his friend with a buy-out of his debt-laden company, no matter how bad the deal could be and sound.
It is worth noting the fact that such kind of scenario is not a one-off. Just a few months back, the president is remembered to have committed tens of hundreds of billions towards the rescue of another private company known as Roko.
The MPs and other concerned Ugandans tried to stop the provision of public funds to a foreign firm, but the president put down his foot. And as they sat, the rest is now history.
Yet in another patriotic setting other than Uganda, such funds as these ones which were invested in Roko would have been invested in a public institution such as National Housing and Construction Company(NHCC) to help to empower it to do the work but the same which the foreign company does at exorbitant costs.
