05 September 2015, Kampala – Ugandans who use liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking are having difficulty finding any on the market, owing to a shortage in the country.
One user said he looked for gas in every corner of Kampala, but could not find any filled cylinder.
“I moved around almost all stations but I could not find gas,” one user said.
“I could only find gas at one Hass petrol station in Kampala,” he said.
Another Total Uganda customer told this newspaper that after looking almost everywhere in Kampala, he was lucky to get one cylinder in Kampala’s Industrial area. But this reporter yesterday established that some filling stations had gas but it was still in short supply.
An official at Total Kawempe told us that they “did not have gas but we got supplies” on Wednesday.
Total Uganda general manager Imrane Barry confirmed they had supply shortages in the past few days: “We have been having [gas] shortages and not just Total but most of the retailers. There has been insufficient gas supply from Kenya. The good news is that we have received supply and given to more than 20 stations.”
An official of the ministry of energy last week told The Observer journalists that part of their concerns was that Ugandans would not use all the LPG to be produced by Uganda’s oil industry. But the few users continue to suffer sporadic shortages.
*Alon Mwesigwa – The Observer
