Ugandan traders blockaded several streets in the capital Tuesday to protest at lengthening power blackouts they say are crippling businesses around the country, witnesses and police said.

Uganda has been facing worsening power shortages in recent months after the government failed to pay its bills with power generators, leaving homes and businesses in various parts of the country without electricity for days on end.

"There was a large crowd of people on the roads burning tyres and chanting, because they were angry over the power cuts," Robert Muwebe, a shopkeeper in central Kampala, told AFP.

Muwebe said that parts of the city's central business district had been without electricity for four days due to load-shedding by the national power distribution company, Umeme. Load-shedding is cutting power to parts of the power system to prevent a breakdown across the grid.

Police confirmed that they had been dispatched to the sites of the demonstrations, but said they had managed to defuse the protest after successfully appealing to Umeme to turn the power back on.

"We fear that if load-shedding goes on people will get more angry, and hope that all due consideration is taken for people's work schedules," Ibin Ssenkumbi, a spokesman for Kampala metropolitan police, told AFP.

Uganda has seen repeated demonstrations this year by protestors angry at rising living costs.

Protests in April led to a brutal clampdown by security forces that left at least 10 people dead across the country.