Karuma Hydropower Project. File Photo
Uganda Electricity Generation Company Limited (UEGCL) flouted Uganda’s procurement law when it sourced AF Consult at $111 million (Shs365.941 billion) to supervise the construction of Karuma Hydropower Project, Parliament’s Natural Resources Committee says.
“UEGCL consultants were procured without competitive bidding, having been unsuccessful in the application/bidding for the owner’s [the Energy ministry’s] owner’s supervisory consultant,” the committee noted in an April 2016 report now before Parliament.
The committee urges the government to further look into the procurement.
UEGCL’s accounting officer Mr Harrison Mutikanga neither answered the Daily Monitor’s telephone call nor replied the paper’s text message.
An attempt to reach UEGCL’s public relations officer Ms Cissy Nawatene too failed.
UEGCL procured AF Consult last year.
Many Ugandans though only got to know more about it after media reports about shoddy work at Karuma HPP, which is being constructed by Sinohydro Corporation Limited, the company President Museveni selected to construct the 600 megawatt Karuma HPP.
Energy Infratech PVT Ltd, the firm the Energy ministry procured at $7 million (Shs23.077 billion), is also supervising the construction of the $1.6 billion (Shs5.274 trillion) Karuma HPP.
The Natural Resources committee called for proper coordination of the project “in accordance with the signed contract between the contractor and the ministry and the owner’s contract”.
Following reports that the contractor (Sinohydro) had done shoddy work, President Museveni suspended the commissioner Energy Resources, Mr Paul Mubiru, and Henry Bidasala–Igaga, the commissioner Electric Power.
Mr Bidasala–Igaga also doubles as the Energy ministry’s Karuma HPP project manager.
Corrective measures that will now have to be undertaken could push the commissioning of Karuma HPP from December 2018 to, say, 2019.
Should that happen, Uganda would have to find other means of boosting electricity generation capacity quickly to avoid power rationing.
Currently, according to different government officials, suppressed demand for electricity is increasing by 50MW annually.
However, many large hydropower power projects take upwards of three years to complete.
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