THE RAILMAN: Inside Eng. Charles Kateeba’s €387 million (UGX1.6 trillion) plans to restore Uganda Railways’ former glory Engineer Charles Kateeba, for all practical purposes, knows Uganda Railways Corporation (URC) like the back of his hand. The government probably couldn’t have chosen a better man to lead its plans to revamp the national railway company. He first joined the state-owned railways' outfit in 1984 and by 1986, he had become a Senior Production Engineer, further rising to become the Chief Mechanical Engineer in 2006 for a decade. From 2013 to 2016, he also doubled as Acting Managing Director, before being made the substantive chief executive of the railways company. In that role, Kateeba has also been a member of the Regional Joint Commission for the development of the Standard Gauge Railway connecting the Port of Mombasa to Uganda, Rwanda, and South Sudan and a Board Member SGR Project Management. He also once served as Secretary to the national Standard Gauge Railway Steering committee (2013 – 2015). Away from his hands-on experience, amongst many other qualifications and professional memberships, he also holds an MSc. In Manufacturing Engineering and Machine Tools Technology from the Zaporizhzhia Institute of Manufacturing in Ukraine. In this interview with CEO East Africa’s Agaba Rhyman, he shares his plans on revamping Uganda Railways to continue playing a complementary role to the much taunted Standard Gauge Railway, when it finally starts.