Africa-Press – Uganda. Mr Patrick Amuriat Oboi, the president of the Opposition party, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), has called for an audit of the Soroti Fruit Factory, a plant he has termed as a white elephant.
Mr Amuriat claimed that for close to four years ever since the plant was opened for commercial processing of oranges, he has barely seen or heard a success story among the farmers.
“Was the plant given to the people of Teso in good or bad faith?” Mr Amuriat said while campaigning for his party’s flag bearer for Serere County MP by-election, Mr Emmanuel Eratu.
He further claimed farmers continue to struggle to find a market for their fruits yet a multibillion taxpayers’ asset remains idle in their vicinity.
“They gave farmers orange seedlings to plant. Now when it comes to buying the oranges, farmers are told that the oranges are not the ones suited for the factory,” Mr Amuriat said.
But Vice President Jessica Alupo, who is also the Woman MP for Katakwi, said Teso farmers should not lose hope but they should instead carry on with the cultivation of the plants.
She also revealed that money has been secured to expand the plant and also enhance its capacity to crash both oranges and mangoes.
Ms Alupo, also an orange fruit farmer, said the problems will be resolved when the expansion and the capacity of the plant is done. He asked the farmers to visit their agricultural officers for the right information on fruit management.
Mr Charles Okello, an orange fruit farmer in Atiira, Serere District, said when President Museveni launched the fruit factory in 2019, their hopes were high, but only for a while.
When the National Agricultural Research Organisation (Naro) rolled out the growth of improved oranges in the mid-1990s, the people of Teso, through National Agricultural Advisory Services (Naads), embraced the cultivation of oranges, and by mid 2000s, majority farmers had surplus. This led to a call for a fruit processing unit that started to gather steam among farmers and politicians.
In April 2015, the government, with support from Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), partnered to construct the plant at Arapai Industrial Site, with the initial completion expected to have been in 2016.
The factory, which has the capacity of crushing six metric tonnes of oranges, has Uganda Development Corporation with 80 percent shares, while the farmers through their Teso Tropical Fruit Growers’ Cooperative Union have 20 percent shares.
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