Stakeholders in the energy sector have called for urgent scrutiny and forexic investigation into Uganda’s electricity sector.
This follows an impromptu announcement from the government about the expected load sheds that will be affecting areas of the Kampala metropolitan and some parts of eastern Uganda over the temporary shutdown of the Isimba hydropower dam.
According to the government reports the dam was shut down following what is perceived to be a human error from an engineer of the Uganda electricity generation co. ltd (UEGCL ) who allegedly opened the radical outflow instead of inflow gates leading to the flooding of key equipment and thus needing over Shs. 5Million to rectify the error.
However, this did not settle well for the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) and other civil society partners who noted that the current challenges causing the Isimba dam shutdown were a clear indication that there was a much bigger problem regarding the electricity sector and that while Dams like Bujagali remain one of the world’s most expensive, it not only explains the high electricity costs and low consumption but the ineffectiveness of these dams.
“Something is a mess with the electricity sector,” Ms. Ireen Twongire member of the Women for Green Economic Movement noted.
Saying that if nothing is done Uganda was to continue losing Trillions of shillings while facing a power sector crisis
Twongire also noted that there should be an investigation into the possible connivance between the Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) and Independent Power Producers and that the connivance could explain why Uganda was apparently generating power that was not evacuated to the grid for consumption by citizens during such emergencies.
“Parliament and the Auditor General should investigate UEGCL, is the company employing incompetent engineers, or was the flooding of Isimba dam equipment an act of sabotage? Government has mooted plans to return management of its dams to Ugandan entities, some private sector firms may be against this and may have wanted to portray UEGCL as being incompetent,” Twongire said.
In this Paul Kato a member of the Youth Clean Energy Champion also added that they were also a need to investigate why Uganda’s electricity projects including Karuma, Isimba, Bujagali, and Aswa dams among others were awarded to companies through single sourcing or faced corruption scandals
he noted that the single sourcing and corruption could explain why Bujagali produces some of the most expensive power in the world, both Isimba and Karuma dams continue to suffer from technical defects or other challenges while the Aswa dam remains idle five years after its commissioning and that therefore the electricity sector problems go beyond the Isimba dam shutdown and must be investigated to find a lasting solution.
“Government also needs to change its electricity sector investment strategy, instead of paying companies to generate excess power, the government should support communities to access off-grid solar home system which can be deployed for production purposes as well,” Patrick Edema a Youth Clean Energy Champion added.
In his remarks, Dickens Kamugisha, the CEO of AFIEGO, also noted that the government has for long been telling people that there was excess power and that currently, the country produced 1300mw, of these 800mw
were consumed at peak hours and 400mw during off-peak Kamugisha, therefore, noted that it was very absurd that the government was even considering importing power from Kenya (60mw) having requested for 193BIlllion as funds to pay for excess power in the recent budget questioning why the government wouldn’t use that excess power now that the country was faced with a crisis and cater for those areas that were previously served by the damaged dam.
“Ugandans should demand where there is the excess power, is the government being deceitful about the power, are the dams supposed to combine and produce power really producing or they’re ghost dams so its absurd to talk about importing power and at the same time funds for excess power. We shouldn’t allow that,” he said
Adding that however, much of the issue of lsimba dam was due to human error, there was no guarantee that the incompetent companies may be giving Uganda defective dams and that the government was not open enough to admit to so and thus with investigations it will explain why the economy is facing problems and why people who are connected to the grid have reduced from 26% to 19% and therefore explain why many businesses are shutting down.
