Africa-Press – Uganda. Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) says it has withdrawn a five-acre piece of land “unscrupulous people” allocated to Jena Herbals to set up the Covidex factory in Soroti Industrial Park.
Paul Kyalimpa, the deputy director general of UIA, confirmed that the land is in a wetland. He said a new offer has been made to Jena Herbals.
“We sent [Prof Patrick Ogwang] to someone who had not utilised land for five years. And because he did not want to lose the land, he instead took him and showed him a wetland, which was irregular,” Kyalimpa said yesterday.
Prof Ogwang is the inventor of Covidex, a local herbal remedy used to treat Covid-19 symptoms.
During yesterday’s inaugural Covid-19 awareness marathon, he told Daily Monitor that Jena Herbals has surveyed the new piece of land UIA offered and “by end of month we shall get the official allocation”, with construction expected to be completed by March 2022.
“We are finalising the lease transfer. We have already drawn the plans for the factory and laboratory. Where they had given us was a wetland. It was difficult for us to backfill,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ms Margaret Muhanga, the State minister for Primary Healthcare, said the awareness marathon was being used to encourage old people to get vaccinated.
Ms Muhanga said whereas millions of Ugandans have been inoculated, the recent daily caseload of Covid-19-positive people in the wake of a global onslaught from the Omicron strain is a cause for concern.
“Young people have been vaccinated, but old people are not. We had a mass accelerated campaign to vaccinate 4.8 million people before we open the economy, but we have doubled the target by vaccinating 9 million people,” she said. She also said the country boasts of 30 million Covid vaccines, with 19 million being dispatched to different parts of the country to be used during the festive period.
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