Mbarara Businessman decries empty promises from President’s office over Ugx200m Merchandise loss

By Our Reporter 

Mbarara – Mbarara-based businessman Friday Wilson has decried empty promises from some of the presidential offices that have not fully followed up his concern.

He has therefore requested President Museven to intervene into his issues and contribute towards his loss of Ugx200m allegedly caused by UNBS.

Wilson who is a merchandise trader in Mbarara City dealing in textile items is calling for government to help him recover his lost capital and merchandise.

This comes after his textile items including bed covers, mosquito nets and bed sheets which he had imported from China were confiscated by Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) suspecting them to be substandard.

Wilson went to China in January 2018, he imported a number of mosquito nets, bed sheets, bed covers and Insecticides from a Chinese manufacturing company situated in Yiwu city, on reaching Kampala in April he realized the date of manufacture of the items was not matching, this attracted UNBS to suspect the merchandise of being substandard.

“In 2018 January, I went to China, I imported a number of different items that included mosquito nets and insecticides called cockroach powder, bed covers, and bedsheets, on reaching Kampala I was told the date of manufacture was not matching. Because it showed that insecticides were manufactured in July yet things arrived in April, UNBS suspected the things to be substandard but me who had bought them had never imported substandard merchandise.

I went to China myself, made orders and the Chinese man who manufactured mosquito nets forgot to attach a seal paper showing size and number of nets inside such as percentage of cotton,” said Wilson

Speaking to our reporter, Wilson  says he was much affected because he used loans most of the time and that he made great loss since his merchandise was confiscated.

After the incident, Wilson opted to write to the president seeking for support. He wrote a letter to the president in 2020 asking for his intervention and support towards the loss he incurred.

“On 14th Jan 2020, I wrote a letter and sent it to the president, the letter reached him during Covid-19 times. The president’s private secretary Dr. Keneth Omona on 20th June 2020  replied assuring me that the letter was delivered to the president, and that they would tell me what the president decides on the issue. In the letter I had requested President Museveni to support me and I get back to my business,” he said.

Wilson believes that he has been paying a lot of various taxes to the government but this time he’s stuck and has not been helped.

Wilson adds that he had never experienced such a challenge in all the 10 years he has been in business, and according to him, he made a loss of over Ugx200m in the process.

“You know when you go abroad for shopping you experience a lot of expenditure on air ticket, accommodation, transport and shipping, so including this process I ended up losing over Ugx200m including the prices of the items that were destroyed,” he added.

He says he should be supported and given back the items since trading merchandise was his only source of income.

Wilson has been a key mobilizer of NRM for decades. He says that he has financially supported NRM especially in general elections. But surprisingly he’s been left in the cold in his time of trouble.

According to UNBS’ letter signed by the executive director Ben Manyindo, it says that the businessman was advised to re-export the non-conforming mosquito nets back to the country of origin or have them destroyed at his cost.

However, Wilson says he is not against UNBS because maybe they were doing their role as an authority. He further noted that also it was not his fault instead it was the Chinese company’s fault.

Recently on 16th, August,2022, Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) launched a new board to constitute the national standards council to curb the prevalence of counterfeit products in the country.

The UNBS annual report 2020/2021 states that products worth more than Ugx200m were destroyed because they did not conform to the standards.