WORK AT THE NEW BUJAGALI HYDROELECTRIC POWER STATION IS PROGRESSING WELL AND WILL BE COMMISSIONED NEXT YEAR.

Business Feature By Leo Odera Omolo

THE Bujagali hydro-power project is expected to be ready next year, according to the project director of Bujagali Energy Limited. The first parts of the turbines were installed earlier this week and civil works on the power house, the overflow and the spill gates were in final stages when Saturday Vision visited the site.

“The exact date of commissioning will be announced by the Government but we are expecting it to be some time next year,” said project director Glenn Gaydar.

He said the procurement of the turbines, generators and other electrical appliances was 95% complete.

The project will be on schedule despite a low-quality rock found at the site, which forced the developers to remove it and replace it with an artificial rock made of concrete and steel.

The weak underground was only discovered after the flow of River Nile had been diverted and the western bank had been drained.
“You can’t see what is under the water. That is one of the risks with hydro-power projects,” explained Gaydar.

The contractor did not want to take any risks, more so as the rock was located just after the gated spillway. “There was a risk that the water, coming out with great force, would destroy the rock, create a hole and undermine the integrity of the dam,” he said.

Dozens of workers could be seen laying the concrete and steel slab, the size of almost two football pitches, where the rock had been removed.

Earlier, the workers cleaned every inch of the base with brushes to stop possible seepages, a tedious and time-consuming job.

Despite this setback, the project cost will remain within the contract sum, Gaydar said. “The cost will be covered by our contingency funds.”

Biggest project
The $860m project, which will generate 250 megawatts of electricity and put an end to load shedding, is the biggest project ever undertaken in Uganda.

The executer, Bujagali Energy Limited, is a consortium of American Sithe Global, Kenyan Industrial Promotion Services (IPS) and the Ugandan Government.

IPS is an affiliate of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development. The consortium put $190m into the project while the rest are loans, mainly from the World Bank Group, the European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank.

The project employs 2,500 people who work around the clock in three shifts. The facility consists of a power station, housing five 50 megawatt turbine generators. The structure is 52 metres high and stretches 30 metres under the ground. The site has its own quarries and cement mixers. “We mix cement with ice to prevent the cement from heating up and cracking,” said spokesperson John Chihi. The cement is procured from Bamburi in Kenya while the steel is shipped in from Turkey.

Of the total number of workers, 2,200 are Ugandans. They are employed as welders, carpenters, concrete finishers, equipment operators and truck drivers. The majority of them were recruited locally. “We were fortunate to find enough skilled labour locally since another hydro-power project was built in Jinja five years ago,” said Gaydar.

All the workers are equipped with life-saving gear, such as helmets, boots, fluorescent vests and ropes. Only one minor accident has been reported since the project started in August 2007.

Once completed, the power plant will come as a relief to businesses and industries that have been struggling with continuous power cuts in the past years.

Bujagali, located eight kilometers north of the existing Nalubaale and Kiira power plants, will generate double the amount of electricity using the same water.

Reliable and affordable power will make Uganda’s manufacturing industry more competitive in the region, creating more jobs and contributing to economic and social development.

But even before the project is complete, the communities displaced on either side of the river have been transformed.

Four villages on the eastern bank and four on the western bank, 34 families in all, had to be resettled because of the project.

Some 200 youth in the new village of Naminya are being trained in vocational skills, while village health teams were set up to sensitise the communities on malaria, diarrhea, and HIV/AIDS.

“We organised a health and hygiene competition among the households and the winners got goats and mosquito nets,” said Chihi.

Jinja district health officials say water-borne diseases like cholera, bilharzia, diarrhea and typhoid had been a common occurrence in this once remote neighborhood.

Hadija Kezala, who lives within walking distance from the project, won a cow, a box of washing soap and three mosquito nets for maintaining the cleanest home.

Besides uplifting the community, the contractor is also running an environmental programme. They reforested 440 hectares of land and trained people how to set up tree nurseries.

As for tourism, the Bujagali Falls will disappear but the rafting will continue. The rafters only have to start their journey further down the river. The water on the western bank will be turned into a recreational lake. “We just have to move the tour operators to the other side of the dam,” said Gaydar.

The mighty structure rising out of the drained river bed has disproved the skeptics who thought a project like Bujagali was not possible in Uganda.

Ends
leooderaomolo@yahoo.com