BY Fred Male
The Kampala Capital City Authority is set to rehabilitate 36 roads in a sorry state in the city’s five divisions.
The state minister for Kampala and Metropolitan affairs Kabuye Kyofatogabye while addressing journalists at the government-owned Media Center on Thursday said that the Kampala city roads rehabilitation project is part of the Citywide infrastructure development program that seeks to meet the government’s long-term development project to foster the transformation of Uganda’s economy.
The 288 million Us Dollar project is funded by the Africa Development Bank to tackle the problem of congestion in the city, through upgrading the road network, improving traffic junctions, and enhancing drainage capacity to mitigate flooding in Kampala.
Kyofatogabye also said that the project includes upgrading 69.8 Kilometers of roads, 123 kilometers of non-motorized traffic facilities, and the provision of street lighting. He revealed that the full scope of the work will include walkaways, pavement and drainage works, traffic signals, planting 10,000 trees in the city, and the construction of 30 public toilets and parking areas for trucks and bicycles.
He also said that some roads like Masanafu Sentema road, Wamala road, and Old port bell road go through wetlands and require a lot of fill materials to construct them. Initially in the project, the minister told journalists that there was a component of providing 50 Eco-friendly buses but president Museveni advised that money should be diverted to the construction of additional roads.
Among the roads included in the project are Old Kira road 1.17 kilometers, Mpererwe Kiti road 10.7 kilometers, Ntinda Kisaasi road 2.7 kilometers, Bukoto Ntinda road 1.8 kilometers and Kabira junction to Ntinda bringing a total road Kilometers to 85.57 kilometers from the 69.8 kilometers of the roads of the project initially.
On Wednesday Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago raised concern over what he called the inflated costs for the construction of 31 roads in Kampala next month. Lukwago stated that KCCA is having a low budget and the money that comes in to cater for critical issues in the city like infrastructure is stolen through Inflated costs.
Now, Kyofatogabye gave a breakdown of how the money is to be used in the Kampala roads rehabilitation project funded by the African Development Bank. He said that the actual road construction will take 246.2 million Dollars, the project management will take 14.95 million dollars, institution support is calculated to take 3.6 million Dollars, and the 11 million dollars earmarked for the Compensation and resettlement plan of the project-affected persons.
He also said that the 12 million Dollars for the additional roads is the money that was meant to buy the Eco-friendly buses that were diverted to road construction and advised by the president.