How in the blazes do you pronounce UEDCL?

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WHAT’S UP!

My friend Harry usually does not mince words, he lets it all out when he wants to, and it helps that his vocabulary of two-syllable words is quite extensive. Over the years, he has somehow made it a career of cursing out Umeme every time something happens to his power supply, which has been many times.

But even he was trumped when power went off on Monday night, just after Umeme had handed over the business of distributing and selling electricity in Uganda to the Uganda Electricity Distribution Company Limited (UEDCL).

Used to venting his frustration at Umeme with several choice words, he was almost out of breath by the time he finished pronouncing all the words in UEDCL, and in any case, it just didn’t sound right.

“Man, it’s really frustrating, you can’t even curse out these guys properly,” he said, clearly frustrated.

Monday night was a kind of a watershed moment for Uganda, on many different levels. One was aptly portrayed by a cheeky headline in one of the local dailies the next morning — UMEME HANDS OVER POWER PEACEFULLY, it read. On a rainy morning, with no power, it did bring a bit of a cheer.

In a country where we are used to nothing working properly, we knew the Umeme handover was not going to come off smoothly. Especially when the bickering started about just how much money the Government was supposed to pay as a buyout.

It was hard to understand why we (it’s our money those government officials paid out, remember that) had to pay Umeme when its contracted period expired. They have been here making money out of us for 20 years, then we pay them to leave? Whoever agreed to that contract deserves public flogging, and I could use some of Harry’s choice words right now.

Reports have it that Umeme had demanded to be paid $234m (sh846 trillion) as a buyout, but Parliament reduced that to $190m (sh687 trillion). Then the Auditor General recommended that the actual figure was $118m (sh427 trillion), which was duly paid before the deadline of March 31.

Knowing how Ugandan public officials operate, the difference between $190m and $118m, all of $72m (sh263 trillion) was probably someone’s njawulo. That Auditor General must be a very brave man to do what he did.

But the whole Umeme saga was rotten right from the start, so we should have expected a very bad smell at the end. In 2011, a committee was set up by Parliament to probe into problems with the country’s power sector.

The committee, headed by Jacob Oboth-Oboth, found that negotiations that led to the initial contract were riddled with irregularities. Not least of all was that Umeme, as a company, did not exist during the negotiations, which were held in the US instead of Kampala and handled by an American company, not the Ugandan government. Umeme was only incorporated 11 days before the agreement was signed. Typical Ugandan negotiating methods, right?

In 2009, a committee headed by Gen. Salim Saleh looked into why power tariffs in Uganda were higher than neighbouring countries. The committee found that proper procedures were not followed and that in the first four years of operation, Umeme could have defrauded the country of more than sh400b through inflated costs. In addition, the investments that Umeme claimed to have done could not be verified, because it had closed the instrument put in place to do so.

So, it was pretty much common knowledge that after 20 years, the Umeme concession would not be renewed. The question was, how would it end? And would it end Harry’s using his extensive four-letter words vocabulary?

For more than 10 years, I’ve had a long-distance relationship with Umeme. Ever since they introduced the Yaka prepaid system, Umeme has been a voice on the telephone, but mostly, initials at the end of a WhatsApp message or a Twitter (now X) DM.

Along the way, I had developed quite an extensive network with Umeme employees, from division managers to technical guys. Every time power went off, I had someone to inbox or call.

So, I was at sea on Monday night when the power went off. I had nobody to call or inbox. When I finally found UEDCL’s handle on X, all I saw were pictures of smiling people handing over placards.

By morning, we still had no power, and I still had no one to call. I didn’t even know the communications person there; it so happens that most communications people in major companies are former journalists, but I didn’t know this one.

Luckily, I was reviewing a book, so I spent the morning reading. Eventually, power came back on at 2:00pm, then went off 20 minutes later. It came back on at 3:00pm, then off at 3:05 pm. By that time, I was calling Harry to help, but his phone was off. Probably run out of battery because of no power.

So, is there a short form of UEDCL I can pronounce in two syllables? How in the blazes does one pronounce UEDCL?

Follow Kalungi on X (Twitter), @KalungiKabuye