Speaker Rebecca Kadaga

The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga has urged the outgoing Chinese Ambassador to promote Ugandan tourism when he returns home after his tenure ends later this month.

Kadaga made this call while bidding farewell to H.E. Zhao Yali who will be leaving Uganda after serving as the Chinese Ambassador for the past five years.
Ambassador Yali will leave at the end of September. The meeting took place in the Speaker’s Office, on Tuesday, 20th September 2016.

The Speaker said that Uganda is a great tourism destination with several attractions around the country, and urged Yali to promote it.

“When you return home, I urge you to encourage people especially from your province to come and visit Uganda,” she said.

Kadaga added that with the government’s commitment to revive the national airline, there will be better connections to Uganda from different parts of the world.
“We are working on the revival of the national carrier and other infrastructure to promote the enormous tourism potential of Uganda,” Kadaga added.

H.E. Zhao Yali promised to promote the tourism potential of Uganda but called on the government to work on the physical infrastructure.

“Uganda has the best weather but there is need to improve on the infrastructure,” Yali said.

The Ambassador however, noted that the Chinese Government is supporting some of this infrastructure development as seen by the four major projects being undertaken.

“The construction of the Kampala-Entebbe expressway, the upgrade of the Airport and the building of the two dams at Karuma and Isimba will make Uganda a good destination for tourism and investments,” he noted.

Yali said he was happy that Uganda was reviving the national airline which is an important marketing tool for a country and eases transportation. He added that with a new airport, terminal building and runway, the number of visitors through the airport will increase from one million to three million persons per year.

On the construction of the Isimba Dam, the Speaker expressed disappointment with the unfairness exhibited by the contractor where the agreement of having the project shared between Busoga and Buganda has not been followed.

“There is no single building on the Busoga side. There are no workers on that project from Busoga. I have contacted the contractor and have also written to the Ministry to have a census on the workers,” Kadaga said.