Stop being stupid about public infrastructure

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OPINION

By Simon Kaheru

We will mourn Rajiv Ruparelia for a really long time. We need to — and to grieve for his family, the bright future he had ahead of him that fizzled out in that motor inferno, and how it reveals once again the nature of our society.

Sadly, we might not learn anything new. Learning only happens if we change — just as education only counts, if we use it to do things differently.

Our management of public infrastructure, which is one of Rajiv’s murderers, proves this squarely. I don’t need to repeat how stupid some of us feel on hearing the story of how those barricades kept getting erected and taken down without notice.

There is nothing new there because of our general inability to be serious.

On my way to the Ruparelia household to pay respects, I drove up Ismail Road in Mbuya and noticed an urchin with a pickaxe hacking at the pavement.

For two decades, this road in Mbuya has alternated between being a tarmac and a murram road. After the road would be ‘fixed’ afresh, it would take months for small potholes to appear on the side.

Even I, with no formal engineering education, now know that this is the beginning of trouble on the roads. Whenever I’d see one, I would report to the city authorities so they could fix it early. Never — till the road disappeared. They finally built it up afresh and opened it up to use two months ago. Only for me to find this boy hacking away at it with a pickaxe.

I arrested him. He had been chipping away at a concrete manhole cover so he could lift it up. Why? His ball had fallen into the drains. Some people gathered and agreed with the lecture I gave the fellow about the cost of the damage he was causing.

We retrieved his ball — made of sisal rope and used buveera. That ball has already destroyed the road, I can guarantee. Watch that space. Two days later, on a fitness walk, I saw a lady working in a salon on Port Bell road casually toss her trash into a well-constructed ‘trash skip’ by the side of the road. The concrete structure covering the culverts there. Again, our general stupidity when it comes to public infrastructure works is a solid colour.

The people doing the road works on Port Bell road have constructed those heavy culvert covers ‘very well’ and positioned them in front of a long series of lock-up shops, restaurants, bars and other commercial entities.

All these places had zero trash management systems in place until...these culvert covers. Now, all these businesspeople and entrepreneurs and the residents that live behind their establishments have a seemingly organised place in which to throw their garbage.

On that walk, I inspected the next six culvert covers and, indeed, they were full of garbage. And soil. The soil is from the road works. See, in line with our general stupidity when it comes to public infrastructure, these roadworks have been on for years now. During those years, the tarmac road surface, such as it was, was removed. Leaving what? Silt and soil.

Even as the road construction people and their supervisors were building the drains and placing culverts...the silt and soil was making its way in and getting compacted, helped along by the trash contributions of the residents.

Meanwhile, those people working daily along that road have been breathing in piles of dust and in a few more years’ time they will be in hospitals fighting for dear breath or laid to rest six feet under. But they have no idea about this right now and nor do the authorities building the roads.

Instead, the authorities require construction companies to include phrases about HIV/AIDS and child labour and corruption on the boards announcing their road works.

Stuff that means nothing. Which is why we do not sympathise with any government official trying to explain away the nonsense we see out here, and that we know is nonsense.

Back when my wife and I were planning to build a house, we were often confounded that people would say with authority, phrases like: “It takes about five years to build a house.”

What type of house? Using what materials? What size of house?

No — just know it takes about five years.

The shoddiness of that mentality is in public view in our public infrastructure — we actually all believe that it is normal for these roads to be “under construction” for years and years and years on end. We have normalised this in our brains to the extent that we have ministers making public statements that I would never want my children to hear me say about the house they live in.

Just days ago, investment minister Evelyn Anite stated that infrastructure in the Namanve Industrial Park was lacking because it had not been provided for. Instead, she said, the land for it had been allocated to investors.

Elsewhere, works and transport minister Gen. Katumba Wamala revealed that the contractor had not been paid sh1.35 trillion and had suspended works — hence the tragic management of the Busabala junction where Rajiv’s life ended.

This is not normal. It must stop being normal.

We need to be serious about our country, Uganda. The reason our management of public infrastructure is so lacklustre, mediocre, low-esteem and dangerous to life and limb is because that’s how we think at a domestic level. We build lousy houses designed by anybody ‘anyhowly’, cut corners even when doing so puts the lives of our own children at risk...this is not normal. It must stop being normal, because it is just stupid.

www.skaheru.com @skaheru