Irked by the constant outage, power consumers in Hoima are demanding an explanation from power distributors Umeme over the high power bills.
The consumers say despite the constant load shedding, they continue to pay huge power bills. Those doing business complain that the power bills are eating into their profits.
George Bukeyi, a shop and hair saloon operator in Kiryatete says he was given a bill of 150,000 shillings for his business last month; the money he says was too much given the long load-shedding spells being experienced.
He demanded that Umeme comes up to explain this and sensitize customers on how these electricity bills are determined.
Ronald Talemwa has a fridge in his shop. He says almost the whole of last month he did not have power for his fridge as power was always never enough to run the fridge the few days that it was on. He is now contesting a bill of 45,000 shillings that Umeme sent to him.
Peter Mayanja, who runs a secretarial bureau in Kiryatete, says he did not use power for the whole of last month but he was given a 20,000 shilling bill.
Mayanja accuses Umeme of inefficiency and cheating consumers. He demanded that government cancels its contract with the power distributor.
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Doreen Ogenga, the Umeme area Manager for Hoima and Masindi admits the power problems but says this is a national problem which she attributes to limited units of power generation.
Ogenga says while Uganda’s electricity demand stands at 455 megawatts, the country is only able to generate 350 megawatts.
On the electricity bills, Ogenga maintains the power meters count per unit of power used and dismissed as false claims that the electricity bills had gone high despite a power outage.
