WORKERS in the Petroleum industry will get a boast in skills training to enable them handle emerging tasks of the oil sector.

According to officials from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resource working together with their counterparts in the Education Ministry, Government plans to train 4,000 technicians to work in the gas and petroleum industry.

“We want to ensure that workers in the petroleum industry get the necessary skills that will enable. A lot of work in the oil industry will be at technical level. So we are going to train about 4000 technicians who will be handling the day-to-day works in the oil sector,” revealed the permanent secretary in the education ministry, Alex Kakooza.

Kakooza said this while commissioning a sh 500m science laboratory at Ndejje SS in Luwero district over the weekend.

This move is part of the government’s preparation for the oil and gas production in the Albertine Graben in Western Uganda.

Uganda expects to begin oil production by the year 2019.

Alex Kakooza said the move to train the technicians, who are to work alongside graduates, will play a crucial role because they will be directly involved in the petroleum production.

Technicians for petroleum exploration in Uganda

“A lot of work in the oil industry will be at a technical level.So we are going to train about 4,000 technicians,” Kakooza said while commissioning a sh500m science laboratory at Ndejje SS in Luwero district.

The laboratory was jointly funded by parents and the education ministry.

Kakooza said the funding of the laboratory was in line with his ministry’s objective of skilling the youth through promoting the teaching of science subjects.