Lubowa hospital works stall

Ministry of Health has said construction of the International Specialised Hospital in Lubowa, Wakiso District, will not be completed within the revised June deadline.

The ministry, in June 2019, handed over the site to the main contractor, Finasi, after Parliament guaranteed a Shs1.3 trillion loan for its works, with an agreement that the construction would be completed by June 2021. 

But in April 2021, the ministry announced an extension of the construction duration by another 15 months when the contractor reportedly highlighted setbacks occasioned by Covid-19 lockdown and heavy rainfall.

When our reporter visited two weeks ago, the facility was still at foundation level and the construction site bushy.

In an interview with this newspaper yesterday, Mr George Otim, the commissioner for infrastructure at the Health ministry, said construction works cannot be completed in June because of unavoidable reasons.

“We are at about 24 percent [of the construction]. The foundation work is complete and we are now left with the upper parts,” he said.

He added that “capacity problems and financial flow” issues affected the construction works. 
When asked about the time the contractor would need to complete the project, he said “we are going to discuss it with the developer.”

Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, the Health minister, declined to comment on the matter when our reporter asked her last week. 

Ms Betty Ethel Naluyima, the Wakiso District Woman MP, said leaders have been denied access to the construction site.

“We have tried several times but we have been denied access as leaders. So I can’t commit myself that there is anything going on there. We have a big question mark but we are following it up at Parliament level,” she said. 

In August 2019, legislators and health officials, including Dr Aceng, were denied access to the construction site of the specialised hospital.

The incident followed a directive from the then Speaker of Parliament, Ms Rebecca Kadaga, that Parliament’s Health Committee should investigate allegations in relation to the disappearance of money meant for the construction of the hospital.

In May 2019, Mr Herbert Ariko, then the Soroti Municipality MP, raised the matter before Parliament, citing missing funds for the project. 
Mr Ariko said $37m (about Shs130b) out of $397m (Shs1.4 trillion) was unaccounted for.

He said on May 16, 2019, the East and Southern Development Bank released $87m (Shs305.8b) but only $50m (Shs175.8b) was received by Stanbic Bank.

Still, in 2019, there were also reports that the legal battle between Finasi, and ROKO Construction Company had paralysed works at the site. The matter is related to an alleged breach of contract by Finasi on admitting a Chinese sub-contractor, PowerChina Guizhou Engineering Co., Ltd, to conduct civil works instead of Roko.
But in March 2020, Dr Aceng said the issues had been resolved.

“The contractor, together with our engineer from the Ministry of Health, [we] have been progressing well on the preliminary works and the preparation on ground and excavation has been done,” Dr Aceng said then.
Ms Allana Kembabazi, the programme manager for Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER), told this newspaper that the specialised hospital is not a priority.

Ms Kembabzi said there are priority areas in the health sector that have to first be addressed.

“The project was passed in a manner that was illegal and it will not help fix our health issues; it is an expensive hospital and we are at appoint where people lack basics in our [existing public] health facilities,” she said.

Mr David Bahati, the then State Minister for Finance (Planning), who had tabled the loan request, relied on the cost of medical treatment abroad. 

However, Butambala County MP Muwanga Kivumbi, who was against the move, argued that it is “unpatriotic to approve the requested promissory notes” of Shs1.4 trillion for construction of the facility because there are other urgent gaps in the health system.

Launch
President Museveni in 2017 launched the construction of the specialised hospital to end the spending of an estimated $150 million (about Shs526.7b) per year on “medical tourism” to foreign countries.