Third Deputy Premier and minister without portfolio, Hajati Lukia Nakadama has directed government departments and related institutions to enforce the presidential directive and give all their printing and publishing work the Uganda Printing and Publishing Corporation (UPPC) and Vision Group.
The directive came on Friday November 25th as she was officiating thanks giving prayers and a luncheon at Entebbe to mark 120 years of UPPC. The event was at the company premises where construction of the premises for the Uganda Security Printing Company Limited is ongoing.
Earlier on, the acting managing director Mr Kenneth Oluka had in his speech explained that at the time of privatization in 1992, President Yoweri Museveni made a case for retention of the then government enterprise but that time without any government funding. This he said posed a challenge for the new entity, UPPC created by Act of Parliament; having to survive commercially by making its own revenue.
To surmount this challenge, Oluka said the corporation needed support and was banking on government, especially office of the President and the premier’s office.
The corporation’s supervision is under the ministry of he presidency. Presidency minister Milly Babalanda in a speech read for her by the minister for Kampala City, Hajati Minsa Kabanda also made the same call, saying the corporation was “ours and needs our support” to thrive and contribute to national coffers through payment of revenue. Promising more support to UPPC, Ms Babalanda asked management to match words with action and also take advantage of partnerships with private sector players.
Oluka said the company was asserting itself in puthe blishing business and challenged academics and writers to have confidence in it instead of taking their work to India or United Kingdom. But he reminded the national leadership that UPPC top management remained working in acting capacity, including himself, soon clocking one year in acting capacity as MD.
Deputy Premier Nakadama promised to address this.
Canon Edward Kamoga who led prayers said it was just befitting to crown the celebrations with prayer because withering one hundred twenty years through technological, economic and political was God’s will beyond human effort.
The UPPC traces its history from colonial administration as a publication to document colonial officer’s work to account to the Crown in London on their work and developments in the East African region.
At the time it was known as The Gazette. After independence it was renamed The Uganda Gazette. In the early 1990s the NRM government under the structural adjustment policy lined most of its companies for divestiture but according to Mr Oluka, the President considered the strategic importance of UPPC and directed that it be retained.
In 1992, the retained entity was given corporate status with a mandate to print and publish government documents. In the most recent times in 2018, government created a new entity, the Uganda Security Printing Company Limited (USPC) to bolster its position in security printing to ensure national strategic objectives.
The new company, a partnership in which UPPC hold 51% on behalf of government and the rest held by a Germany company Veridos, is a “special purpose vehicle to revamp UPPC” according minister Nakadama.
At the function former and long-serving employees of the corporation were awarded certificates of recognition in appreciation of their services.
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