ENTEBBE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT: President Yoweri Museveni has directed the Ministry of Health to immediately start conducting Covid-19 mandatory tests at Entebbe International Airport shortly after he commissioned the newly built Port Health Facility yesterday.
The facility built by the UPDF Construction Brigade is expected to ease the inconvenience of passengers at the main gateway into Uganda and will initially attend to all the arriving passengers.
“The testing process should commence since the missing items in the facility are few. We shall complete as we proceed with the tests. I thank Prime Minister Nabbanja for taking the NRM line. If you have got the basics, move on. During the protracted people’s struggle NRM had only 27 guns and we confronted an army that had 60,000 guns,” he said.
President Museveni called on leaders to internalize the NRM strategy and understand the services that must be run by the Government. He said that the UPDF Construction Brigade should construct all the government run facilities in order to reduce costs. He said that it is a mistake to bring the private sector in building such a facility as the one he was launching.
“This Covid-19 testing Centre should be run by the government health staff and it should immediately embark on the task of testing the arriving passengers,” he said.
The Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja saluted President Museveni for protecting Ugandans against Covid-19 and revealed that the Centre cost Shs 15billion to complete and equip.
She said that passengers have been paying Shs 250,000/= (about US$70) for testing and that she was pleased to note that the charges have now been reduced to Shs 100,000/= (about US$30). She said that arrangements have been made to ensure that tourists are given a dedicated service point in order to prevent delays.
The Minister of Health Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng said that the facility has got 8 PCR machines that can handle 548 samples every 2 hours with 150 personnel from the Ministry of Health and UPDF who have been deployed to serve.
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