All districts to get road equipment

Nov 19, 2009

ALL districts, municipalities and town councils will soon have their own road construction equipment, President Yoweri Museveni has disclosed.

By Conan Businge

ALL districts, municipalities and town councils will soon have their own road construction equipment, President Yoweri Museveni has disclosed.

The President, who was commissioning Kampala City Council’s (KCC) road construction and sanitation equipment in Kampala on Wednesday, said the plan would help reduce government expenditure.

“Every district will have tractors. There will be no more excuses for non-renovated roads,” Museveni explained.

Uganda’s road network covers about 80,000km, with 22,500km managed by districts, 4,800km by urban authorities, and 35,000km under the local communities. With the new equipment, KCC will construct 200km per year and upgrade 100km.

The garbage collection capacity in the city centre will also be doubled. The cost of tarmacking a kilometre of a road will be reduced from sh1b to sh400m.
The KCC road and sanitation machinery was procured under a loan from the Chinese government.

The equipment include a refuse truck, road sweepers, cesspool emptier, water tankers, pick ups, graders, wheel-loaders, backhoe and 42 vehicles.

The President cautioned KCC against carelessness and negligence when using the new equipment.

He said his investigations in the operations of KCC’s garbage collection revealed that some officials assigned to handle it were corrupt.

He wondered why the officials found it acceptable to collect garbage in the afternoon when the city is jammed with traffic.
“It is costly to have trucks stuck in traffic jam for hours,” he said.

He also said most garbage truck bins were dented, implying that some officials illegally use the trucks to carry bricks and stones.

He ordered all garbage collections in the city to be done at night, and that all vehicles get tracking gadgets, to monitor their movement.

Museveni asked KCC to ensure that the city centre roads were tarmacked, sidewalks well constructed and buildings get fenced off grass yards.

The commissioning ceremony was attended by the local government minister, Adolf Mwesige, Kampala mayor Nasser Sebaggala, the five city division chairpersons and other local leaders.

The mayor thanked the President for the support rendered to KCC in cleaning and developing the city.

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