JUST IN: Muhoozi’s PLU Threatens SGR Construction With Planned Protests At Turkish Embassy

Uganda has over the years cherished having the Standard Gauge Railway which is more efficient and modern that the old meter gauge railway which was constructed in the late 1890s and only reached the Ugandan border of Malaba in 1929 and reached Kampala in 1931.

The old Meter gauge is nolonger efficient with the modern and technologically advanced systems and it’s the reason Uganda joined the rest of the East African nations to push for Chinese funding to have it constructed with loans.

Tanzania started construction of it’s own without loans during the reign of late John Pombe Magufuri and it was launched recently and working efficiently just like Kenya which had it’s own constructed on Chinese loans and was launched in early 2018 but ended in Naivasha.

Uganda despite failing to get Chinese funding worked out a plan to partially fund the construction with other funding from a syndicated International financing arrangement led by Citbank, with additional support from the World Bank and the Islamic Development Bank.

Early this year President Museveni joined his Kenyan counterpart to launch the launch of an extension phase of the SGR from Naivasha to Malaba boarder.

Government has since compensated majority of the profect affected persons where the SGR will trek the 273 kilometers from Malaba boarder to Kampala and the contract has been handed to a Turkish firm Yapi Merkezi Group.

All these arrangement risk being antagonized by planned protests by the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU) a political pressure group aligned Chief of Defense Forces Muhoozi Keinerugaba to the Turkish Embassy in Kampala over tensions that have been brewing over the past weeks.

It all started by Muhoozi sharing tweets on X and throwing insults at the Turkish Ambassador whom he called useless before demanding that Turkey hands over blogger Fred Lumbuye to him.

These attacks by Muhoozi stem from Somalia where Uganda has pitched camp since 2007 fighting the Al-Shabaab terrorists. Turkey later joined the war but Muhoozi insists Ankara is just enjoying the sweat of Uganda and Somalia in stabilizing the war conflict nation.

Uganda’s former Foreign Affairs Minister Gen. Jeje Odongo met Turkish ambassador to Uganda Mehmet Fatih in Kampala and both sides re-affirmed bilateral cooperation in trade, infrastructure and education.

PLU previously organized demonstrations against foreign missions including protests targeting the German Embassy over what they termed as interference in Uganda’s Internal affairs when German Ambassodor H.E Mathias Schauer questioned Uganda’s treatment of opposition members especially by Muhoozi.