Why West Nile is in darkness: Five WENRECO Engineers fired, Automated switch disabled

BY ANDREW COHEN AMVESI August

ARUA. Top secrets as to why the West Nile region is in darkness have emerged.

For the last one-month, West Nile has faced the worst cases of power outages which West Nile Rural Electrification Company Limited (WENRECO) has been attributing to lack of fuel to run ElectroMaxx generators at Ewuata thermal power station.

But we have been reliably informed by an insider that the major cause of the continued power outages in the region is as a result of the sacking of four senior engineers while the fifth one resigned, and the decision by the management to disable the automatic power switch at Ewuata.

The four engineers were sacked one month ago by Eng. Kenneth Kigumba, the WENRECO General Manager for allegedly failing to fit in his restructuring framework.

Those affected were the WENRECO Distributions Manager, the Construction Engineer, the Protection Engineer and the Distribution Foreman. The four were sacked and shown exit on the same day while the Safety Officer decided to resign citing poor working environment.

According to the insider, the sacking of the senior engineers has gravely affected the operations of WENRECO since they have been replaced by junior staff.

As a result, the control in switching and maintenance has become a problem following the massive exit of the senior engineers though unconfirmed reports indicate that there is a secret recruitment undergoing in Kampala to replace the officers.

We are told that the fired engineers were hurriedly paid, but they are still demanding for more money since they were permanent staff supposed to leave work upon retirement.

Similarly, our source also confined in us that in a period of three to four months, WENRECO bought fuel to run the ElectroMaxx generators to a tune of Shs1.8billion and also used another Shs400million to repair one of the faulty generators at Nyagak which to date, is still not working.

The source said despite all this expenditure, the situation of power in the region will continue to worsen because the automated switch at Ewuata which used to automatically switch to Nyagak when the generators run out of fuel was disabled to save fuel.

However, when contacted over all the above allegations, Eng. Kigumba simply told this reporter that: “None of the stuff you have said is true in the way you have said them.” He later excused himself from office, saying he is heading to Yumbe.