The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, has asked President Museveni to extend tax incentives and holidays to a one Prof. Muhamad Lubega, the proprietor of Lubega School of Nursing and Medical Services.
Lubega School of Nursing and Medical Services located in Iganga has an annual intake of 300 students but receives over 1,000 applicants qualified for admission.
“Your excellency, foreign investors get tax incentives and tax holidays of five years, but Lubega has never received any, yet you can see the buildings here, you can see the number of students,” said Kadaga, who was speaking at the 1st graduation ceremony of Lubega School of Nursing and Medical Services held on Friday 6 December 2019. Eighty students graduated on the day.
Kadaga’s plea was based on the school’s annual intake compared to the applications received and its plans to expand into training nurses in specialized fields such as management of cancer and trauma which are on the rise countrywide.
Prof. Lubega revealed the school’s expansion plan where he wishes to construct 30 classrooms costing Shs5 billion, to accommodate more students and offer more courses.
“We want to train specialized nurses, because we have many cases of trauma relating from road carnage, and much emerging age-related illnesses which the general nurses cannot ably handle,” he said.
President Museveni said he would consider either extending a grant or interesting Lubega in soft loans offered by Uganda Development Bank (UDB).
“I have no problem with giving him a grant once in a while but the more reliable way for him to cover many people is through UDB where we give soft loans to notable industries,” he said.
Museveni appreciative of Lubega’s initiative, and also called on people of Busoga to venture into industrialization and take advantage of sugar cane production, which he said is still underutilized.
He stated that although Uganda has enough sugar for internal market, producers have not ventured into making sugar used in pharmaceuticals and in beverages which is still being imported.
“We have not utilized sugar fully, it is now only for drinking, yet we miss out on supplying pharmaceuticals with more refined sugar used in children’s syrups,” Museveni said.
He urged Iganga residents to take interest in an initiative spearheaded by the Speaker, to make and bottle juice from sugar for sale.
“I agreed with the Speaker that those small industries should start, why can’t we bottle sugarcane juice?” asked Museveni adding that “You can after pounding sugarcane use its fiber to make paper, and toilet papers which we now import from China.”