President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni yesterday through his Twitter page divulged how the plans had been finalized for the country to start assembling buses in the country.
This is a plan and topic the President has been talking about for long and it looks like finally it’s about to come true.
The President said after meetings with line ministers, KCCA executives and leaders of the Metu Zhongtong Bus company, strategies had been finalised for this venture.
“I met stakeholders, line ministers, KCCA executives, and leaders of the Metu Zhongtong Bus Company. I am happy to note that we have finalized plans for the company to assemble and manufacture buses to ease transport needs in the greater Kampala Metropolitan Area.” Mr Museveni tweeted.
This is going to be a great stride for the country once these buses are start coming out and will go a long way in helping to ease transport and reduce on the transport fares for the common man.
However there is a great worry among taxi operators that once these buses come into great bulk, their services might be suspended from the city centre.
Importation of buses was outlawed by the president last year after he said the country now had the capability of producing buses for local demand.
This saw local businessman Metu Katabaazi go into a partnership with Chinese company Zhongtong to form the Metu Zhongtong Bus Company based in Namanve.
The company was commissioned in March 2019 by President Museveni.
Metu Zhongtong manufactures assorted buses such as school buses, inter city buses, tourist buses and passenger buses.
This company also intends to open a factory for buses in Kasese besides supplying buses and managing transport in Kampala.
Uganda has another bus manufacturing company based in Jinja known as Kiira Motor Corporation KMC which has already seen two of it’s buses plying the Kampala routes.
Kiira Motor Corporation is the most famed one and even went into an joint venture with the UPDF’s Luweero Industries.
It’s expected that this joint partnership will be seeing 5,000 buses produced yearly.
The managing director of KMC Paul Isaac Musasizi while talking about the commissioning of the company said that they were only waiting orders of Ugandans to start producing and delivering these buses.
Mr Museveni has for a long time talked about self sustenance saying that Uganda among other African countries have the ability to manufacture these items they import from abroad.
He had always called for people to be innovative and seek government help. This will go along way in helping the country save taxes that would be going into importation of these buses.