The Minister of Energy, Ruth Nankabirwa has said that the ongoing power outages across the country could continue up to April 2025.
Nankabirwa told Parliament that outages would be resolved once government secures funding to strengthen the Uganda Electricity Distribution Company Limited (UEDCL) that is in the final process of taking over from Umeme.
It is the transition glitches ocsasioned by the low investment in Umeme service delivery infrastructure that is causing power outages.
Her remarks came in response to concerns from Luwero District Woman MP Brenda Nabukenya, who highlighted the severe power shortages in Luwero over the past two months, where residents have only had electricity for 2 to 6 hours each day.
“Luwero has spent like one and half months without power. It comes like for 2-6 hours and it goes, regularly. What are we supposed to do? Because we can’t run business on generators, we can’t run health facilities because they have vaccines and specific medicines that require to be in fridges and it has been continuous,” Nabukenya said.
She further expressed frustration, saying, “Electricity isn’t free, we pay for it. But Umeme has failed to give us electricity, we can’t be demanding for a service that we pay for. They should make sure that we have electricity.”
In response, Nankabirwa attributed the outage issue to the government’s decision not to invest further in Umeme, further explaining that the government cannot always respond immediately to power outages caused by transformer failures, line breaks, or fallen trees.
She assured the public that by April 1, 2025, the government would have completed the transition from Umeme, urging Ugandans to be patient during this challenging period.
“But I want to promise you that by April 1, 2025, we would have gone through this if the loan that is before Parliament which has the money for the successor company, UEDCL, will help us a great deal to prepare UEDCL to be ready to respond spontaneously without going through rigors of applying for money, which could take a long time,” Nankabirwa said.
She acknowledged that this situation may cause some inconvenience and requested understanding from MPs and the public.
“This is going to be a small inconvenience and I would like MPs and the House at large to bear with us. I will cross check if there is any other cause other than what I have explained so that we can come up and rectify,” Nankabirwa stated.
Umeme’s 20-year concession as Uganda’s electricity distributor is set to end on March 31, 2025, at which point UEDCL will take over.
This transition has raised concerns about job losses, with 191 employees expected to be affected.
During a retreat for new members of the Parliamentary Committee on Environment and Natural Resources at Speke Resort Munyonyo, Nankabirwa explained that the government would not absorb all Umeme staff due to potential redundancy issues.
“Unfortunately, we cannot simply absorb all the staff, especially since UEDCL already has personnel from the successor company,” the minister said.
The Minister assured the employees impacted by the changes that they would be given priority for re-employment in other positions within the electricity sector.
“There are 191 of them, and we will retain them as specialists so that when the need arises, we can call on them. We can also recommend them to contractors working within the network to give them first priority,” she added.
