What if we all played our part! 

Uganda is a beautiful country with endowments, good weather, food, an advantaged geographical location, very creative warm and welcoming people, winning admiration of many globally.

Its capital, Kampala, touching on Lake Victoria, the world’s largest tropical lake and the second fresh water lake by surface, is a true cosmopolitan area with a growing population of urbanites witnessing fast-changing infrastructure as well as improving housing.

What is more fascinating are the people, their passion and resilience! I have been a regular user of a particular road in Mbuya, Kampala for over 10 years and I find a group of four ladies always tending to the road by slashing overgrown grass.

They have been very consistent to the extent if you use that road as early as 6:30am, they will be there almost every day. They exude values of time management, resilience, reliability and trust from authority that is granted to them. This is responsibility and surely being in the right place at the right time for the right cause. These are probably the most important values that, unfortunately, are eluding many people lately, yet we have a lot to guard!

I once read a story, closer to home in South Africa, where a lady, who was frustrated with frequent power cuts occasioned by unauthorized taps by some people, started a campaign against power theft. She set about identifying suspected power thieves, a risky undertaking.

The authorities picked cue, looked into the legitimacy of the claims, the evidence and made some arrests. Her community, thereafter, enjoyed reliable supply, before most recent electricity woes.

A few weeks back, key functional facilities including an Administrative block, health centre, office of Chief Administrative Officer, LC 5 and many others in Nakaseke went off the national electricity grid supply following the cutting and stealing of electricity poles as well as cables in the area. This experience lasted over 12 hours as the technical teams worked to restore supply.

Certainly, this is not the first time for such to happen and neither is it the only place we are experiencing great disruptions in electricity supply across the country.

Thieves or vandals, as they are commonly known, have not only put the lives of many in great danger as they tinker with public infrastructure, sending taxpayers miles backwards as billions worth of shillings from the networks are siphoned. They have mostly stolen conductors, siphoned transformer oil, pylons of transmission lines while others cut and bring down the network only to leave it down.

In 2022 alone, Umeme estimates that electricity infrastructure worth over Shs 20 billion was cut down and stolen by these vandals while 2021 registered over Shs 26 billion in stolen network equipment, accounting for about 144 kilometers of electricity lines.

Imagine, how many new customers would be brought on board if we used this money to construct new lines!

The cost of non-supply of electricity is extremely higher when communities go off following incidents of vandalism. Currently, Uganda’s access to the national electricity grid stands at 27 per cent while other sources account for 23 per cent and Government’s agenda is to grow it to 60 per cent by 2027 as enlisted in Vision 2040 and NDP III.

I am afraid that if the theft isn’t checked, it might be difficult to achieve this target. The sad thing is that these demeaning practices are happening across all areas and at all levels of society, not only eroding the hard-earned gains registered over the years but eating up the moral fibre of the next generation.

It is becoming extremely difficult to trust anybody with anything. Imagine how much resources in terms of time, money, calories, relations and energy we would save as individuals, communities and perhaps as a country if we all took deliberate efforts and ground to do the right things.

We should make our actions count by being accountable as responsible, committed members of the public, enjoying all the good things at our disposal, some given to us by nature while others built and reserved by our forefathers. It is not late to redeem our fate.

The writer is the head of Communications and Marketing, Umeme Limited.