Fort Portal youth assemble cars
Chris Ategeka, director CA Bikes Project, at their workshop at Kagote in Fort Portal Town. Photos BY RUTH KATUSABE.
What you need to know:
The University of California mechanical engineering graduate says CA Bikes also assembles motorbike-ambulances and sports bikes which helps communities.
Kabarole
As a way of fighting the increasing unemployment in Uganda, two youth in Fort Portal Town have started assembling cars, motorcycle ambulances and sports bikes.
Chris Ategeka, 29, and Rocky Musana, a resident of Kasusu LCI in Fort Portal Municipality South Division have started the CA Bikes Project which has released a set of vehicles for the local market. The vehicles are assembled from scrap purchased from suburbs around Fort Portal Town.
The young entrepreneurs on Tuesday launched a pick-up truck, an ambulance and 32 sports bikes. Ategeka was sponsored by Carol Adams, a Fort Portal-based NGO to Study in the US. He holds a Bachelors of Science and Masters of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the same institution.
He said he manufactured a motorbike-ambulance because he was touched when he toured Kyenjojo District and found a young man stranded. “I suffered with others to transport him from deep in the village up to the main road to be taken for treatment at Fort Portal Regional Referral Hospital,” he said.
The patient’s lower parts had apparently been eaten by rats without feeling because he was paralyzed. In a bid to promote girl-child education, Ategeka offered 36 sports bikes to orphans in secondary schools who walk long distances to go to school.
Ugandans blamed
While presiding over the launch of the project, the Fort Portal Municipality MP, Mr Alex Ruhunda, blamed Ugandans who go abroad and do not want to come back and use the technology copied from abroad to develop their home areas. “When I went abroad, I found many people from Tooro. They are rich, employed in big companies but they do not want to come back and develop their home areas,” Mr Ruhunda said.
The CA Bikes Project is based in Kagote in West Division. Musana acquired practical skills in mechanics from his father’s garage in Fort Portal. “Being lazy, I could not manage lifting heavy engines of vehicles. I decided to continue with studies and graduated in ICT at Mac Maine School of Computing and Electronic Mechanic Engineering at Nakawa NVTI,” said Musana.
He said after studies, he started working in DAJ Communications Fort Portal branch as a phone and computer technician. In 2011, he got in touch with Ategeka, who revealed plans to start a car refurbishing garage. “Chris had an idea of starting up a project. I asked him to buy for me the machines and equipment. I managed to make more than 200 bikes from scrap pipes and we delivered them to persons with disabilities and needy students,” Musana said.
Beginning
Musana said before joining CA Bikes, he had started a Mobile Money shop and repair centre in Rwebisengo Trading Centre in Ntoroko District, but lost all his capital when thugs broke into his shop. “I was left with little money I decided to buy a scrap of Nissan 1200 and took it to our workshop in Kagote,” Musana said, adding that after buying the scrap vehicle chassis, it took a year for him to refurbish it into vehicle for sale.
