A vaccine production project commissioned by President Yoweri Museveni is the subject of scrutiny after reports that the project has made little progress.
This follows reports in Ugandan media that Museveni and, to a lesser extent, Ruto, who attended the project unveiling, were given false hope about Ugandan scientists’ ability to develop Covid-19 vaccinations.
While testifying before a parliamentary committee, Uganda’s former Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Elioda Tumwesigye said the project had produced ‘fear’ among Ugandans.
The committee, which is looking into how funds for the vaccination initiative were spent, was also told that UGX 31 billion (about Sh1 billion) had been set aside for research.
“By the way, we’re still far away at least in manufacturing vaccines, the country needs to build capacity. Taking too long wouldn’t be unexpected, and what so far is being put in place is good…because the next time we get a new disease, we know how to handle it. Now our people know, the procedure, we need to get technology for some of this work,” said Tumwesigye as quoted by the Observer.
“I think what was not fair was giving inadequate information to our head of state (read Museveni) and then he would go to the press and address the nation and promise that maybe in the next few months, next month or weeks we shall have this.
Ruto, who is vying to succeed his boss President Uhuru Kenyatta in the August 2022 elections, traveled to Uganda in July 2021 to officially start the project with Museveni.
On his return to Kenya, he complimented the initiative and claimed to have helped Equity Bank, a Kenyan lender, issue a Sh15 billion loan to the project.
“The investor of that factory came to this office and sat on the same seat where you are seated two years ago and asked if I could connect them with Equity Bank,” the DP said, during an interview at his official residence in Nairobi.
“I picked the phone, called Equity and told them that ‘there is an investor in my office and because you have a branch in Uganda; can you help him set up the business he wants? So when the individual succeeded and got Sh15 billion loan and proceeded to put up the company, where is the problem if I am invited for the launch?”
Equity Bank though denied advancing the said loan.
“We have not extended a facility of Sh15 billion to any pharmaceutical company in Uganda. We want records to reflect that,” Equity Group director for legal services Christine Browne told a parliamentary committee in Kenya.
Original Story — THE OBSERVER
