Gov’t Resumes Free Electricity Connection Program
By Twinomujuni Catherine
The government through Ministry of Energy and Mineral development has on Wednesday, 03, 2021 launched the resumption of free electricity connection policy that was initially called off in December of 2020 due to financial constraints.
It should be noted that this policy was previously launched in 2018 where customers were to pay for only inspection and then government caters for other connection fees so as to increase the power connections in Uganda.
However, due to the outbreak of Covid 19 that came with financial constraints, government decided to put a hold on the project.
While addressing Press at Uganda Media Centre in Kampala, The Minister for Energy and Mineral Development Hon. Mary Gorreti Kitufu officially re-launched the project and gave a reason as to why the program was put to hold.
“The planned high number of new connections requires a corresponding high budget provision from government which became a challenge especially after the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic due to many competing demands for resources and this caused significant delays in making new connections by the service providers.” Hon. Dr. Mary Gorreti explained.
Minister also revealed that besides the backlog and new electricity applications, the government was in arrears for connections made by service providers at a tune of 103,409 billion.
“The good news is that the launch of the policy will surely pave way for subsidized electricity connection to customers” says the Energy minister Mary Gorreti Kitufu.
Preventing issues of last year where UMEME announced the suspension of the free electricity connection after finding out that some areas were not paid for by the government, the energy minister has assured that the government has already released some money owed to it by electricity distribution companies.
“Government has allocated shs. 14.2billion to Uganda Electricity Distribution company limited (UEDCL) and small service providers to pay for already made connections and commence new connections on 8th. March.2021 because their target is to have at least 60% of Ugandans connected to electricity by 2027 so as to relieve Ugandans.”