The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Ministry of Health has said they had a bad deal with ROKO constructions, a local company that was earlier in 2014 handed a deal to renovate Mulago National Referral Hospital and transform it into a specialized facility.
Initially, a loan of $50 million was sought from the African Development Bank to complete the hospital but expenses kept piling and now according to Health Minister In charge of General Duties Robina Nabbanja, government is currently paying the sub-contractors since ROKO went bankrupt.
ROKO’s bankruptcy was brought to the lime light in December when another company Roofings filed a suit in the Commercial Division of the High Court, seeking recovery of up to Shs 165M and $552M. Then, it was revealed that the company owed different creditors and suppliers up to Shs 40Bn in local currency and $36M.
Nabbanja says ROKO had sought loans from different banks to work and would pay whenever government released funds to them until this couldn’t happen anymore.
She adds government hasn’t lost any money and has put some new money in the current budget that will do the final touches for the hospital to fully reopen in addition to paying the sub-contractors that did work but were never paid.
She couldn’t reveal how much exactly that’s currently needed to finish the works, although in May last year approved $9.5M for the same works to be finished.
Mulago was scheduled to reopen fully as a specialized National Referral hospital in 2016 after completion of the renovation works. Since then, new opening dates were being set and passed without reopening with the most recent date being March of 2021. Before that, the ministry had announced that opening would happen in December 2019. More than a year later, a lot of other work is yet to be done.
David Nuwamanya, the hospital principal adminstrator says they resolved to partially open some places like the outpatient department, parts of the renal unit where patients with kidney problems are handled and the radiology department among others.
He says all the theaters are yet to be opened and the causality unit remains not in operation yet accidents and emergency units are the lifeline of the hospital. While all the wards are complete, he says its illogical for them to reopen them when the supporting theatres are still work in progress.
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