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When the machines at the factory first started roaring over a decade ago, its senior management pledged to turn the venture into “an engine for development to support the livelihoods of vulnerable populations”.

More than a decade since its inception in 2013, Atiak Sugar Factory continues to polarise Uganda into two competing ideological positions of for or against.

With a little over Shs720 billion having been sunk into the project, Shs554 billion of which has been courtesy of government subventions authorised by Parliament, a section of lawmakers this past week headed to northern Uganda for an on-site inspection.

“As investors, you have injected your money here. The taxpayer has injected money here. But on our end, we are frustrated on behalf of the taxpayer because of all the challenges that are happening […] there's no production happening,” Mr Joel Ssenyonyi, the Leader of Opposition in Parliament (LoP), told the top brass of Horyal Investment Ltd who besides having a 60 percent stake in the factory have sunk Shs169 billion into the project.

“The factory is saying that they need more support from the government. The government has put in so far Shs553.8 billion as an investment, but the investor is saying they need more. They have to prove that the investment is valuable. There should be value for money. Otherwise, we are worried that if we continue putting in money, nothing is coming out. We will be wasting time,” LoP Ssenyonyi later told journalists.

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