President Museveni has discouraged Ugandans from buying second-hand clothes.
“They are for dead people. When a white person dies, they gather their clothes and send them to Africa. We should stop wearing them,” he said.
He added: “We have people here who produce new clothes but they cannot infiltrate the market because the second-hand clothes are already all over.”
He made the remarks Thursday while commissioning 16 factories and groundbreaking for the construction of 9 new ones at Sino Uganda- Mbale Industrial Park in Mbale City.
The Minister of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development, Hon. Matia Kasaija, was happy to note that Uganda is in the process of achieving its industrialization goal.
“When you appointed me as Minister of Finance, you told me that I should spearhead industrialization and I’m happy to note that although the journey is still long, we have managed to achieve some success,” Hon. Kasaija said.
“Due to my passion for creating jobs, I sometimes spend sleepless nights thinking of how we can create jobs more than the youth whom we are offloading into the labor market. This project is helping us to create jobs for our youth. If we could get more enterprises similar to this, then my worry about having a job for every youth who comes on the job market would be history,” Kasaija concluded.
On her part, the Minister of State for Investment and Privatization, Hon. Evelyn Anite told the audience that when President Museveni took over power in 1986, he assured Ugandans that his government would cause fundamental change and indeed fulfilled his promise by promoting peace and security as well as development.
“Your Excellency, a country that you inherited with a collapsed economy, you have built it to the extent that currently as Uganda we are talking about manufacturing with 500,000 factories in the country,” she noted.
“The Industrial Park in Mbale has created 2000 jobs for the youth. I want to thank you for being very energetic, very visionary to attract investors to come to Uganda and encouraging Ugandans to join the money economy and add value to our God-given resources.”
The Ambassador of China to Uganda, H.E Zhang Lizhong, hailed the existing good relationship between China and Uganda.
He said China and Uganda are working together to implement the nine programs announced by President Xi Jinping of China in the latest China-African Summit.
The Chairperson of Sino-Uganda Industrial Park Mbale, Zhang Zhigang praised President Museveni for his unwavering support in realizing the dream come true.
He also thanked the leadership of Mbale and all the people of the area for their support.