Prime
Government plans face-lift for Entebbe airport
A recent view of Entebbe International Airport. The government says plans are underway to reconstruct the airport to meet modern standards.
What you need to know:
Works minister says the revamp is meant to manage traffic and accidents at the airport.
Entebbe
Entebbe International Airport will soon have a new look if revelations by State Minister for Works Steven Chebrot are anything to go by.
Addressing journalists in Kampala yesterday, the minister said a Cabinet Paper indicating the designs and features that will be incorporated in the refurbished airport had been drafted and await approval by Cabinet.
“It is very constrained functionally and we would like to reconstruct it to [fit] modern standards. Issues such as regulatory control, financial constraints, environmental protection and political guidance must be addressed in order to avoid a credit crunch,” Mr Chebrot said.
He added: “Besides capacity expansion, the other challenge we face is aviation safety. Africa’s accident rate almost doubled between 2011 and 2012. In 2011, we registered eight accidents which increased to 13 in 2012.”
Dr Rama Makuza, the executive director of the Civil Aviation Authority, said traffic through the airport increased from 700,000 in 2007 to around 1.3 million last year, thus emphasising the need to improve standards at the airport.
According to Mr Makuza, the refurbished airport will have a facility for aircraft maintenance and an expanded Airport Passenger Terminal.
However, as the Works minister and CAA officials talked of refurbishing the airport to ease air transport, Tourism Minister Maria Mutagamba was quick to warn that failure to address infrastructural problems would still hamper the leisure industry.
