'Give roads authority boss Kagina time'

A key stakeholder in the roads sector has urged Ugandans to be patient with Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) executive director Allen Kagina as she bids to turn around the roads agency.

"Given the fact that Kagina has just taken over, you would not expect a lot of improvements overnight," said Mutabazi Sam Stewart, the executive director of the Uganda Road Sector Support Initiative.

"We need to evaluate her after one year. She has promised many things, some of which we should be able to see in May - when she will have finished one year on the job," he told New Vision in Kampala.

Kagina, a former Commissioner General at Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), was appointed by Minister of Works and Transport Eng. John Byabagambi to head a then-beleaguered UNRA after the Mukono-Katosi road scandal.

She is overseeing the restructuring at UNRA, and at a press briefing recently, said she wants to see UNRA oversee the tarmacking of up to 1000km of roads annually from the under 200km currently in the same period.

Mutabazi said he is happy with the increased supervision role that Kagina is exhibiting - traveling around the country to see the state of roads.

"Kagina is moving on the roads, there should be a lot of supervision. If this had been done, most of the roads that are disintegrating would have been averted."

Mutabazi expressed his hope that under Kagina's tenure, local contractors would be more engaged in the business of building roads.

"What I would want to see in her tenure is to have local contractors on board. We cannot continue to depend on foreign contractors year after year and we expect that our local construction industry will grow.

"We hardly have any contractor that can do a road of $10m (about sh34b)," he said.

"The construction policy was passed a long time ago, but there's no meaningful change. The foreign firms just come in and take the money, and go."