Uganda: Museveni Allocates More Luzira Land to Drug Firm
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
The Monitor (Kampala)
7 September 2008
Posted to the web 8 September 2008
Yasiin Mugerwa
President Yoweri Museveni has allocated 30 more acres of Luzira prison land to Quality Chemicals Limited, a local drug antiretroviral and anti-malaria drugs manufacturing company, MPs heard on Friday.
The revelation was made during a one-day tour by Parliamentary HIV/Aids Committee on Wednesday.
The company's Marketing Director George Baguma told legislators that the company was in the process of securing the title deed, bringing the total acreage to 42 acres.
Mr Baguma said: "With more land, we are going to establish phase II of the factory which will accommodate Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) in order to increase production of ARVs."
The new revelation however, comes after it emerged in June, this year that Luzira Prison authorities were under pressure from the government and a section of investors to relocate the prison to allow the smooth parcelling out of its estimated 460 acres to the highest bidders.
Luzira is the biggest prison in the country with a population of about 2,000 inmates. It was constructed in the 1920s by the British colonialists.
In 2005 and 2006, the government through the Uganda Land Commission, allocated over 63.2 acres of Luzira Prison land to the Uganda Investment Authority at an undisclosed value to facilitate the industrialisation programme in Kampala.
However, MPs heard that the commercial production of ARVs in the country is expected in November this year with a total capacity of 6 million tablets per day.
Mr Baguma said: "We are going to have three shifts per day and in each shift at least 2 million tablets will be produced."
The $30 million plant was set up by Quality Chemicals Limited under licence of Cipla Limited, a Indian pharmaceutical company. Available statistics show that about 80,000 of the estimated 250,000 HIV-positive Ugandans need ARVs but are struggling to get them.
Read comments. Write your own.
|
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Copyright © 2008 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Make allAfrica.com your home page
|
RSS Feed
Sign up for FREE daily 'top headlines' by email >> | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | My Account | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
