Lubowa hospital contractor okays MPs’ inspection of site

Finasi-Ishu Construction SPV Limited, the contractor in-charge of constructing Lubowa International Specialised Hospital, has revealed that members of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) are free to conduct an oversight tour of the hospital site on any day after April 22. 

In the April 12 letter, Mr Charles Byaruhanga, the chief operations officer, noted that the project site is currently covered under the necessary Construction All Risks Policy, following the re-commencement of full-scale construction in February.

“In view of the short notification provided for the visit; and the considerably large number of visitors (at least 30), we propose that the visit be held after April 22. This will enable us to prepare all the necessary health and safety requirements for the visitors in a reasonable time,” Mr Byaruhanga said in the same letter.

“In addition, our proposed timing will permit the presence in the country of our executive project management team [which is] currently away on project business,” he added.

Among others, the contractor also asked the Ministry of Health to provide information for each of the visitors, including names of visiting persons, personal protective jackets in all sizes, and protective shoes.

The contractor’s letter followed last week’s committee’s resolution to inspect the hospital site yesterday, and it was meant to ascertain whether the progress was commensurate with more than Shs350b, which has since been injected into the project.

Speaking to this publication on April 15, the PAC chairperson, Mr Muwanga Kivumbi, noted that the committee is ready to wait for the time requested by the contractor, hence rescheduling the oversight tour to Friday, April 26.

“We had a discussion on Friday and the committee took a decision that since their request is to inspect after April 22, which is one week away, we will wait but still press ahead and go. So we have since rearranged this trip hopefully to April 26 at 9 am,” he said.

“We will go to Lubowa because what we are trying to address in Lubowa is response to the Auditor General’s report where he noticed that [about] of $139m has been paid but the work done on Lubowa hospital is only worth $57m. The Auditor General also gave a figure of Shs286b as an excess payment,” he added.

Mr Kivumbi further appealed to the Auditor General to release a special audit that was conducted on the same project, emphasising that “the country awaits the special audit report on Lubowa. It is both engineering and technical audit to let the country know because these are public resources that are being wasted in the name of a specialised hospital.”

Previous attempt
In February, this year, the Leader of Opposition in Parliament, Mr Joel Ssenyonyi, together with other members of the shadow cabinet, were denied access to the site as armed guards at the site asked them to get permission from Enrica Pinette, who they referred to as “madam”.

In the same week, the Speaker of Parliament, Ms Anita Among, ordered her deputy, Mr Thomas Tayebwa, to inspect the site and report back to Parliament on the progress. 

However, Mr Tayebwa, without formal explanation, has never heeded to the directive by the Speaker.