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KAMPALA Uganda (Xinhua) --
A team of ten Ugandan military engineers are
scheduled to leave for China where they will be trained in
railway construction.
Brig. Richard
Karemire, Ugandan military spokesperson, told Xinhua in an
interview on Tuesday that the team will go to Hebei Province for
a three-month special training in construction of a Standard
Gauge Railway (SGR).
The training is part
of the memorandum of understanding reached between China Harbour
Engineering Company (CHEC), the company contracted to construct
Uganda’s SGR, and the military.
“We welcome a
strategic partner that provides skills to the army. We are a
productive force committed to the social transformation of our
country,” said Karemire.
In the memorandum of
understanding, CHEC also agreed to partner to build a
polytechnic institute in the eastern border district of Tororo.
Ugandan is in the
process of starting the construction of a SGR that will connect
it to a similar one in neighboring Kenya.
The SGR will connect
landlocked Uganda to the Kenyan seaport of Mombasa, reducing the
cost of transportation to the coast.
According to
experts, once the construction is complete, the number of days
it takes to transport goods from Mombasa to the Ugandan capital
Kampala will be reduced to two from the current 14 days.
Kenya has already
begun operating the SGR linking its capital Nairobi to Mombasa.
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