Prime
Residents celebrate Shs36m powerline
State Minister for Higher Education and MP for Bamunanika County Dr JC Muyingo commissions a 2km electricity powerline at Kakoola village in Luweero District.
Residents of Kakoola Village in Luweero District are celebrating a Shs36m donation for a Christmas party that they have channelled to install a power line.
On January 1, the locals celebrated the new 2km electricity power connection line for their area after the area MP, Dr John Chrysestom Muyingo, topped up the money he had donated for Christmas celebrations to raise Shs36m for the new power line.
The village chairperson, Mr Ponsiano Mugabi, said the new power line connects Kakoola Village to the national power grid.
“We are humbled, but at the same time celebrating the big achievement for which many of my residents thought it could take longer,” Mr Mugabi said.
“When we got the news that Dr Muyingo had donated to us some money to celebrate the 2019 Christmas and New Year, we sat and thought of a much more important programme that could benefit us more than partying,” he added.
While commissioning the new power line at Kakoola Village on January 1, Dr Muyingo who doubles as State Minister for Higher Education, urged residents to use the electricity to promote development projects in their area.
“You took a wise decision when you approached me with a better plan for the money that was meant to be used for the festivities. We are also lucky that the people who worked on this power line were very honest and did the work within a short time to enable us begin the New Year 2020 with electricity in our area,” Mr Muyingo said.
“Kakoola should be a model village since you have shown to the other areas that you can make wise decisions for your area,” he said.
Kakoola Village has about 600 households with many residents engaged in agriculture related projects according to Mr Mugabi.
Recently, government unveiled a plan to increase the number of electricity connections from an average of 80, 000 to 300, 000 annually.
This is expected to be implemented through Electricity Connections Policy (ECP), whose objective is to increase national access rate to electricity from 26 per cent to 60 per cent by 2027.
Records at the Energy ministry indicate that at least 160,000 Ugandans have been connected through ECP to the national power grid between November 2018 and August 30, 2019, while 130,000 connections were made by the main power distribution company Umeme Ltd.
The balance of 30,000 connections is to done by seven other power distributors.
