Selestino Babungi Umeme Managing Director Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The power distribution company, Umeme Ltd, is hopeful that the electricity connection policy suspended earlier this month could be restored between June 2021 and June 2022, but this will depend on the success of the current efforts to get funding.
The free connection policy, launched in 2018 was aimed at connecting 300,000 customers per year, and when it was suspended, about 240,000 customers whose applications had already been processed were left stranded.
For six months since May when the government stopped releasing money for the connections, there were no connection activities going on by the distribution companies including Umeme. By then, the government implementing agency, the Rural Electrification Agency was owing to the distribution companies more than USD 25 million (95 billion Shillings).
The policy initially targeted to increase access to electricity from below 30 to 60 per cent in 10 years. Umeme Managing Director Selestino Babungi says there are many efforts ongoing by the government to get funding, including from somatic sources and foreign development partners. He fears that these could be affected by the effects of the pandemic on the economies of the development partners too.
Meanwhile, over the year, Umeme completed the USD 83.3m (310 billion Shillings) planned expenditure despite the challenges, to ramp up capacity enhancement and network stabilization programme in rapidly growing regions across its footprint. The money is part of the USD 450m (about 1.7 trillion Shillings) for the 2019 and 2025 investment agenda.
The Umeme Managing Director said he is satisfied that the company has completed all the investment works that were laid out for 2020 on time. This comes as industrialists decry increased power outages which are impacting on their businesses.
Umeme attributes this to the rainy season that usually comes with storms, which damages electricity installations. A new system that will enhance the rapid response by the company to technical faults like transformer breakdowns, cables or poles and any other emergencies, is being installed by the company.
The geospatial network information system has been approved by the Electricity Regulatory Authority for installation and its procurement will be concluded later in January. The system will also integrate customer management with the payment systems, with a hope to respond to constant complaints about wrong billing and under-crediting of customers’ accounts after payment.
This will also be supported by another system that will include digitally mapping of all customer premises […]