By Our Reporter
NATIONAL
The Grace Foam Factory that was gutted by a fire on the night of 20th December, 2022 at Mbale Sino Industrial Park didn’t have firefighting facilities.
The cat was let out of the bag this afternoon 21st December, 2022 by the Minister of State for Finance and Privatization in a tweet where she mourns loss of an investment worth 25Million Dollars and 600 jobs.
Hon. Evelyn Anite revealed lack of firefighting facilities in Industrial Parks when responding to a tweet asking how such a facility could be operationalized without firefighting equipment.
Anite had earlier said she together with her boss, the Minister of Finance had directed that all Industrial Parks in the country should have firefighting facilities.
“The Minister of Finance, Hon. Matia Kassaija and I have directed Uganda Investment Authority to establish firefighting facilities at every industrial park,” she tweeted.
In response, a one Jonathan Mugarura tweeted back asking, “How do you operationalise an industrial park without firefighting facilities?”
Anite then replied saying government made mistakes. “With my experience of last night having to look for firefighters from Jinja & Kampala I can assure (you) we should have thought about having them in every industrial park from the onset.”
Anite’s revelation is in an agreement with the statement from the Elgon Region Spokesperson, Rogers Taitika who had earlier told this website that the fire started from a gas cylinder but because of lack of firefighting facilities, the fire spread.
While speaking to media this afternoon at the factory, Bodhi Xu the administration manager at Mbale industrial Park says that they have lost properties like mattresses, raw materials, machines and a whole building worthy millions of shillings.
By press time fire was still burning as police continues fighting to put it out.
