By Aloysious Kasoma
National Medical Stores (NMS) officials have revealed that the ongoing construction of a giant warehouse in Kajjansi along Entebbe road will be complete by June 2019.
During a guided tour of the facility under construction on Monday by some stakeholders, it was reported that the new facility is 50% complete.
The Shs69bn facility being constructed by the Chinese construction firm, Complant is jointly funded by the government of Uganda, NMS, Ministry of Health and Global Fund.
According to Paul Okware, the Chief Store and Operations Officer at NMS, government contributed Shs19.9bn, Global Fund Shs21.6bn, with the rest of the funds coming from NMS and the Ministry of Health.
“By 8th November, the facility was 50.7% complete and we have so far paid Shs28bn. We still have a deficit of Shs40bn,” Okware said.
The existing NMS in Entebbe has over 10,000 pallet location storage and the new facility is expected to have 30,000 pallets with bunkers for sophisticated vaccines.
According to Okware, NMS is building a facility that can last for at least 50 years with high expectations to proper storage and drug maintenance.
Dr. Maggie Kigozi, the Vice Chairperson of CCM (Country Coordinate Mechanism for the Global Fund) said that as stakeholders, they were impressed with the development and promised to call for more support.
The project is behind schedule as it was expected to be ready by March next year, but it has since been extended to June.
