Nasasira grilled over poor roads

Mar 17, 2011

WORKS minister John Nasasira yesterday had a hard time before the Cabinet retreat in Kampala, when colleagues and district leaders put him to task over the state of rural and urban roads.

By Cyprian Musoke

WORKS minister John Nasasira yesterday had a hard time before the Cabinet retreat in Kampala, when colleagues and district leaders put him to task over the state of rural and urban roads.

After his presentation on the ministry’s performance for the last financial year in which he protested the poor scores that were awarded to him by the Office of the Prime Minister against several targets set last year, Nasasira faced a barrage of questions from colleagues.

All the road upgrading targets were marked “unlikely to be achieved”, but Nasasira insisted that most be changed to read “likely to be achieved”.

During the questioning, ministers Rukiah Nakadama and Jenniffer Namuyangu pointed Nasasira’s attention to several roads in their constituencies which were in a dire state and cost them a number of votes in the recent presidential and parliamentary elections.

Nakadama said the three bridges in her constituency that were supposed to be done last financial year had not been fixed.

Nankabirwa also wondered why the transport ministry sidelines women in awarding community labour-based maintenance of village roads. Sixty percent of such work, she argued, should be given to women to help empower them.

To this, Nasasira explained that in areas where women were given priority, their husbands complained that their working women were no longer cooking for them, which led to family instability hence the need for more sensitisation.

The district chairpersons accused the ministry of working on roads only when the President is expected in a given district.

Gulu district leaders said after the death of former chairman Col. Walter Ochora, roads in Gulu town and its outskirts leading to the burial ground were worked on for the first time in many years because President Museveni was expected to attend the burial.

In his response, Nasasira promised that the situation of roads will improve once the promised road units are procured for every district to work on its roads.

However, he said money that was meant to go directly from Uganda Revenue Authority to the Road Fund to enable several works start was not received due to absence of an enabling law.

He also said the procurement laws for tenders to carry out several works were so tedious and had led to many of the delays.

“While I appreciate the method of assessment used by the Prime Minister, I would like to propose that we should also measure the increase in the number of roads in good or fair condition on an annual basis which have an impact of reducing transport costs,” he pleaded.

Closing the retreat, Vice-President Gilbert Bukenya said the review was evidence that government was keen to ensure accountability in service delivery and should not be stopped.

He said there was poor performance in agriculture, water, health and environment, key aspects to the lives of people in rural areas.

He called for the review of all red-tape centres.

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