Kikuube leaders bow to residents' pressure, hire road equipment
Feb 13, 2024
Kikuube district engineer Emma Arinaitwe said the 10-day rehabilitation works are going to cost shillings 120 million adding that out of this money, 80 million would be spent on hiring the road equipment.
leaders monitoring as machines worked on the road. (Photos by Peter Abaanabasazi)
Peter Abaanabasazi
Journalist @New Vision
__________________ Residents listening to leaders as they launched the rehabilitation of the roads
After the works ministry failed to get Kikuube road equipment, the district leaders bowed to pressure from residents and hired machines to rehabilitate a road in poor condition.
Recently Kikuube chairperson Peter Banura said the district had written to the works ministry to borrow the district machine to work on the roads but the ministry failed to honour the request.
Banura said they had declined to hire machines after they discovered that the money would be spent on hiring road equipment and the roads planned to be worked on would be left out.
However, after waiting for the works ministry in vain, the district on Tuesday launched the rehabilitation of the 10km Ruguse-Kyakabale-Kihamba-Kiporopyo road in Bugambe sub-county.
Kikuube district engineer Emma Arinaitwe said the 10-day rehabilitation works are going to cost shillings 120 million adding that out of this money, 80 million would be spent on hiring the road equipment.
He noted that the road is being rehabilitated by the district works department and the funds being used are part of the shillings 500 million out of the one billion, which the Government gave out to districts and cities to rehabilitate roads.
Arinaitwe added that the roads are in poor condition and the district has no single road equipment to work on them yet the communities are always complaining.
According to Arinaitwe, they decided to hire the machines to work on the roads in poor condition, adding that 10km road they are to grade the road and install culverts and murram.
Kikuube district speaker Chris Nkalu, who is also the district councillor for Bugambe sub-county, expressed excitement about the rehabilitation of the road saying that it had spent over four years without being rehabilitated.
“We had no alternative but to hire the machines to work on these roads which we had promised to people to work on during this dry season,” he said.
However, he said this challenge is going to affect the district because they will not work on all the roads that they had planned for because the huge amount is going to hire machines.
Despite the district crying about the cost involved in hiring machines, the residents of Ruguse, Kyakabale, Kihamba, and Kiporopyo villages in the Bugambe sub-county are excited about the rehabilitation of their roads.
John Byaruhanga, one of the residents, commended the district leadership for rehabiliting the roads saying that it has been a challenge to move from one village to another, especially during the rainy season.
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