Help me clean up UNRA - Kagina

Aug 27, 2017

She says she has been trying to turn UNRA into a performance based organization

Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) executive director Allen Kagina has appealed for support from professional entities and members of the public to help her clean up the Authority.

Kagina revealed that though they had tried to clean up the institution, she was aware that there were still cases of corruption within UNRA that would only be handled if they were reported in time.

Responding to questions from the members of the Uganda Institution of Professional Engineers (UIPE) at Hotel Africana on Friday, Kagina noted that the question of insider dealing existed within UNRA especially in cases where staff owned companies and awarded themselves tenders.

"We have tried our level best to ensure that we fight corruption in the current UNRA. I would urge all of you to report such cases of my staff involved in insider dealing and I will act," Kagina noted.

Kagina also noted that even though she joined UNRA with a lot of confidence that they would be able to lay out almost a thousand kilometres of tarmacked road per year, her team had told her it was almost now impossible owing to the fact that the current road works were extremely slow.

Kagina said she had been trying to turn UNRA into a performance based organization, improved quality management systems and developed an in-house capacity to design, construct and supervise projects and also created a new department of research and development among others.

She said she had realigned UNRA in order to suit the interests of their product users.

"We began to understand that our primary stakeholders were the road users and the reason why we are employed at UNRA is to ensure that we connect the people. There must be value going to the consumers of the product. We want the value to be tangible. We want farmer to say my income grew because I was able to transport my products to the market in time," Kagina noted.

She noted that even though UNRA was one of the best funded institutions, the money available and the demands that come with it made it insufficient for road development.

Kagina noted that she had reviewed all the processes in UNRA and improved overall performance and reduced on wastage within the organization.

She highlighted some of the achievements during her two year stay in office which included the creation of in-house designs for 550km of paved roads for their rehabilitation, in-house feasibility studies for 398km of oil roads, completed construction of 338km, completed construction of 10 new bridges and maintained 70% of the road network in fair to good condition.

She also noted that she had intensified continuous stakeholder engagement with UIPE, and the Uganda National Association of Building and Civil Engineering Contractors (UNABCEC) among others.

Kagina highlighted some of the challenges they had faced as UNRA to include, very rigid Government budgeting framework which does not promote operating in business-like manner.

Kagina questioned why the roads were being subjected to the same procurement laws like the others products.

The other challenge she highlighted was land acquisition process, much of which is in the hands of other Government agencies and the affected persons and this affects contracts.

The other challenges were overloading in which she cited the vehicles transporting sand on the Masaka-Mbarara Highway and encroachment on road reserves and misuse of the roadways.

Responding to a request from an engineering student Emmanuel Muyanja that UNRA ensures that all local and foreign companies on Uganda roads and bridges have graduate trainees, Kagina said she would ensure this was captured into the signed contracts.

Seasoned engineer and one of the pioneer founders of UIPE, Albert Rugumayo, thanked Kagina for the guidance she had offered UNRA maintaining that as local engineers, they would offer her all the support she needed.

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