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West Nile, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The business community and power consumers in Arua and West Nile are threatening to petition President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni over intermittent power supply in the region.
President Museveni is slated to preside as chief guest on February 25th to mark Onduparaka Football Club’s 10 years of existence at the Green light stadium.
For the last two weeks, power consumers in West Nile have suffered regular power outages with reports of several of their electric machines blown while Super market operators and dealers in perishable goods having them go bad due to lack of electricity to run freezers.
Jackson Atima, the chairperson chamber of commerce Arua district and coordinator West Nile business community says he has received complaints from Yumbe, Koboko, Maracha and Arua regarding the drastic change in power supply that has negatively affected their businesses.
According to Atima, the power consumers will petition President Museveni and also organize regional demonstrations if the problem of irregular power supply is not addressed before mid-next week.
But Alfred Ambayo, the distribution engineer West Nile Rural Electrification company- Wenreco says the problem is with Electromax that is currently running eight generators to add on to what is generated from Nyagak hydro power dam. Ambayo however, advises power consumers to use the available power sustainably adding that until government gives more fuel to Electromax, the situation may not change during the dry season.
But Christopher Ndaga, the technical manager ElectroMax denied reports of lack of fuel being their main problem for running the generators and added that the company waits for orders from Wenreco since they are a stand-by plant.
However, some unconfirmed sources intimated to URN that ElectroMax has issues of failing to meet their Tax obligation with URA which has lowered their ability to procure fuel for running the generators for between 18 to 24 hours.
In May 2019, Ministry of energy transferred 9 generators from Electromax in Tororo town to West Nile to increase on the electricity generation by 8.5 Megawatts on to the 3.5 Megawatts from Nyagak to meet the increasing power demands in the region and also solve the problem of irregularity in power supply.
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