Kisaka speaks on the high Cost of City Roads
Kampala Capital City Executive Director Dorothy Kisaka has spoken about the alleged inflation of the cost of City roads.
The Executive Director says the cost is a package of the road construction and related services that will improve City roads to international standards.
She dismissed as impossible allegations by politicians that some technical officials at KCCA had inflated the cost per a kilometre of road for personal benefit.
She says the lengthy and highly technical all stakeholder – inclusive process can not allow individuals to profit from the road works.
She was speaking during her appearance on Baba Television’s morning show “HotCup@9” hosted by Sir Simon Muyanga Lutaaya.
She explained that this ADB project commenced in 2016 with conceptualisation, and this is when the economic benefit of the project was determined. The roads were earmarked, and the process determined.
Later in June 2020, Parliament of Uganda passed the loan after examining the economic benefit about the need to overhaul the 31 City roads.
The roads include 69.7km of widened roads an additional 14km of dual carriage, an additional 16.37km after project adjustment that eliminated eco buses.
The funding bank, African Development Bank (ADB), approves all the processes from inception to completion before a lengthy approval process.
The approvals go through a five other key entities process by the lending bank, the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (MoFED) who sign the financing agreement, the solicitor General and the Parliament of Uganda. Inflating the prices would require all of them to collude from the beginning to the end of six continuous six years – 2016 – 2022.
The project has under gone processes explained as the components of Road construction works, Project Management, Institutional Capacity building that has the Provision of road maintainence equipment, Establishing Road Safety Unity, the Women and Youth Skills Empowerement and the Relocation of utilities and resettlement.
The much awaited city roads will be complete with associated drainage works including improvement to 22 traffic junctions, 134Km of Non Motorised Transport Facilities(NMT), Commercial Vehicles parking places, Bus depots, Thirty (30) public toilets, Six (6) markets along project roads for Women Vendors, Installation of 1,600 energy efficient streetlights and tree planting with in the City.
“A Kilometre of a city road can not be compared to any rural road. From specialized equipment installed on the roads, street furniture, and covered drainage system, relocations in a heavily developed urban environment can not be over emphasized” Kisaka said
The details of the road works were part of the Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago’s state of the City address 2022.
