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we always appeal for government support to sternly faith in the services you are providing?
deal with vandalism.
I think it is a general problem. Like I say,
Another challenge is in Energy Losses. We be- they remember us when the lights are off. Pow-
lieve that there is still headroom but we need a sup- er goes and people start loudly wondering what
portive legislative framework. Like in Kenya if they is wrong. When your public are quiet then you
catch you stealing power, 10 years in jail or you pay know you are doing something right. And as
1,000,000 KeShs which is about 40,000,000UGX – UMEME we always go out to our customers and
straight, no negotiation. But for us if you are caught, do customer surveys of our commercial custom-
you pay 20,000UGX and the highest you can pay is ers, domestic customers and industrial custom-
1,000,000UGX. ers to understand their concerns so that we can
address them. The customers indicated there is
Another challenge we face, and I think it was an improvement. They ranked us higher at about
not foreseen, is that as you come to the end of your 65% compared to previous years, but they still
contract without adequate alignment. If you look at pointed out some issues still affecting them.
Uganda now it is at crossroads in terms of new gen-
eration capital investments coming on board as the EPSI: Can you tell us what some of the
main distributor’s contract is coming to an end. We issues and concerns raised by the cus-
have six years to go and there is a mismatch because
you get long term investment in generation and ac- tomers are and how you are dealing
tually transmission but you only have six years to put with some of them?
it to full use by Umeme.
You know the whole issue of pricing and af-
Learning from this Uganda should really build fordability of electricity has been on the cards.
and get back to the 15 year or 20 year rolling contracts The Head of State has mentioned it and I know
with a review on year 10 so that you allow certainty. the regulator and government, they are working
This is because now we need a lot of investment to on how we can reduce the cost of power through
increase on new generation, to increase access to the looking at the average generation cost of one
grid – grid connections and to reduce on energy los- unit of electricity, but also driving efficiencies
es. But now you have 6 years and the money you are and driving uptake of electricity as solutions to
attracting can be hot or cold. So, there is a mismatch that.
between generation capital investments and other
segments of the electricity sector. Another piece of feedback they gave us is
that we should increase on the speed of our ser-
Lastly, sometimes the operating environment vice. Yes, we have improved, but it is understand-
is unnecessarily hostile. As Uganda we need to con- able. We are in a world of now and so they want
tinuously work on improving our business environ- it faster. As the news is breaking, I cannot wait for
ment; stable policies, stable regulation to ensure that the newspaper tomorrow when I have Twitter,
we can attract cheaper long term capital through WhatsApp and Facebook. It is understandable;
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Any disturbance or therefore, we must adopt and cope. That may in-
uncertainty in those and questions are raised by in- clude using technologies that automate the net-
vestors. Uganda is ranked well but we need to con- work to solve the network issues.
tinuously improve our image to ensure that whoever
is bringing in their FDI is sure his capital is safe, stable A third issue they gave us is that they want to
and solidly protected. have more information about electricity; to un-
derstand the product and what they are paying
EPSI: Your first challenge had to do with for. We took on this initiative and we are work-
perception – public perception. People do ing on it. We believe that as we continue serving
them, they will bring us more issues to solve. But
not have faith in UMEME. What can you say the general service levels have greatly and tre-
about this to those people who have little mendously improved.
