KCC’s Unique Mode Of Road Repair
Mar 28, 2003
One thing that everybody who drives a car will agree upon is that just about every road within Kampala, this dusty and tattered and tired looking city of ours, is that the roads are in bad shape.
By Timothy Bukumunhe
One thing that everybody who drives a car will agree upon is that just about every road within Kampala, this dusty and tattered and tired looking city of ours, is that the roads are in bad shape.
Every road has a pot hole. And some of these pot holes have long ceased to be just pot holes and have now successfully managed to transform themselves into gigantic craters, leaving the road impassable. Every morning, as people leave their homes to drive to work and the long snake of traffic twists and winds itself down the roads, the drivers seemingly playing a game: that of trying to avoid pot holes and craters.
And somewhere in this long line of traffic are the city’s road engineers who ostensibly never get frustrated like the rest of us at the state of the roads. I don’t know if they ever feel like shouting out: “When is somebody going to do something and have these roads repaired?†Maybe they do, but they keep it to themselves.
I don’t know how the powers that be at Kampala City Council decide when to have this or that road repaired. Maybe it comes in the form of a work order that requires 11-plus signatures and knocking on a number of offices whose occupants are nowhere to be seen, being too preoccupied with running around town and tending to their own businesses. Who knows?
What is evident though, is that whoever KCC send out to look at a stretch of road that is due for repairs, that person’s vision of how it should be repaired is seemingly quite different from that of many road users, especially myself.
I live in the Munyonyo area and quite frankly I have no complaints about the road from that side of town. My complaints however, start from Kibuli Road right down past Greenhill School, The Monitor newspaper offices and into Industrial Area.
The now repaired Kibuli Road used to be in the most awful state. But when KCC’s boys — or whoever it was that was contracted to repair the road — set about doing it, there was an all too obvious feeling that they were not going to get it right. And they didn’t!
First a rag-tag group of men who looked like remnants of a chain gang turned up with worn-out shovels and pick axes. At either end of the stretch of road to be repaired, they deployed men with two threadbare flags, one red, the other green. These men, according to their job description, were supposed to control the traffic. But on most occasions they stand there absentmindedly, occasionally waving their flags as they watch a traffic jam build up before their very eyes.
Now rule number one for a KCC road maintenance man (which I think is drilled into you on day one of working for them) is: Never go to a job with everything you need to repair a stretch of road. It is not good for your health and lowers team morale! Rule number two, as you set about the task at hand, is to start digging and make the pot holes not only deeper but, more importantly, neater.
By neater, I mean these men will spend days trimming the edges of the pot holes and turning them from an oval shape into squares. Rule number three: Once that is done, step back, then admire what has been accomplished over the past five days. Then call for the broom. Broom in hand, they sweep their now neat pot holes free of any rubble and loose chippings (not good for the car tyres you see). With that done, they pack up and go, remembering to leave the odd ‘Men At Work’ sign, not to be seen until their trimmed, clean-swept pot holes have gone back to the dogs.
When they return, they go through the whole process once again, but this time they have thoughtfully remembered to bring some tarmac with them to fill up the pot holes. But going out of their way to show everything but competence, they always have another trick up their sleeves. That trick is not to do everything at once, just like they did on Kibuli Road between Total petrol station and Greenhill School.
KCC, in a flash of wisdom that only they could conjure up, decided to repair the road from the Kibuli-Kabalagala junction to Total petrol station. Next, they repaired the road from Silver Spoons Nursery School to the junction that leads to The Monitor headquarters on one side and Mukwano on the other.
Now comes the hitch. They thoughtfully removed an entire stretch of tarmac between Total and Silver Spoons Nursery School, of course doing the needful. They had it graded and trimmed the edges to make it look neater. That was almost two months ago. Since then, they have not been back.
Well, they did come back in a way, to lay a fresh coat of tarmac on that stretch of road they had forgotten all about. And now, right in the middle of that stretch, a pot hole has sprung up.
And what have they done about fixing it? Nothing but to put a brick in it and some shrubbery to warn us drivers about the danger. Hmm!
One thing that everybody who drives a car will agree upon is that just about every road within Kampala, this dusty and tattered and tired looking city of ours, is that the roads are in bad shape.
Every road has a pot hole. And some of these pot holes have long ceased to be just pot holes and have now successfully managed to transform themselves into gigantic craters, leaving the road impassable. Every morning, as people leave their homes to drive to work and the long snake of traffic twists and winds itself down the roads, the drivers seemingly playing a game: that of trying to avoid pot holes and craters.
And somewhere in this long line of traffic are the city’s road engineers who ostensibly never get frustrated like the rest of us at the state of the roads. I don’t know if they ever feel like shouting out: “When is somebody going to do something and have these roads repaired?†Maybe they do, but they keep it to themselves.
I don’t know how the powers that be at Kampala City Council decide when to have this or that road repaired. Maybe it comes in the form of a work order that requires 11-plus signatures and knocking on a number of offices whose occupants are nowhere to be seen, being too preoccupied with running around town and tending to their own businesses. Who knows?
What is evident though, is that whoever KCC send out to look at a stretch of road that is due for repairs, that person’s vision of how it should be repaired is seemingly quite different from that of many road users, especially myself.
I live in the Munyonyo area and quite frankly I have no complaints about the road from that side of town. My complaints however, start from Kibuli Road right down past Greenhill School, The Monitor newspaper offices and into Industrial Area.
The now repaired Kibuli Road used to be in the most awful state. But when KCC’s boys — or whoever it was that was contracted to repair the road — set about doing it, there was an all too obvious feeling that they were not going to get it right. And they didn’t!
First a rag-tag group of men who looked like remnants of a chain gang turned up with worn-out shovels and pick axes. At either end of the stretch of road to be repaired, they deployed men with two threadbare flags, one red, the other green. These men, according to their job description, were supposed to control the traffic. But on most occasions they stand there absentmindedly, occasionally waving their flags as they watch a traffic jam build up before their very eyes.
Now rule number one for a KCC road maintenance man (which I think is drilled into you on day one of working for them) is: Never go to a job with everything you need to repair a stretch of road. It is not good for your health and lowers team morale! Rule number two, as you set about the task at hand, is to start digging and make the pot holes not only deeper but, more importantly, neater.
By neater, I mean these men will spend days trimming the edges of the pot holes and turning them from an oval shape into squares. Rule number three: Once that is done, step back, then admire what has been accomplished over the past five days. Then call for the broom. Broom in hand, they sweep their now neat pot holes free of any rubble and loose chippings (not good for the car tyres you see). With that done, they pack up and go, remembering to leave the odd ‘Men At Work’ sign, not to be seen until their trimmed, clean-swept pot holes have gone back to the dogs.
When they return, they go through the whole process once again, but this time they have thoughtfully remembered to bring some tarmac with them to fill up the pot holes. But going out of their way to show everything but competence, they always have another trick up their sleeves. That trick is not to do everything at once, just like they did on Kibuli Road between Total petrol station and Greenhill School.
KCC, in a flash of wisdom that only they could conjure up, decided to repair the road from the Kibuli-Kabalagala junction to Total petrol station. Next, they repaired the road from Silver Spoons Nursery School to the junction that leads to The Monitor headquarters on one side and Mukwano on the other.
Now comes the hitch. They thoughtfully removed an entire stretch of tarmac between Total and Silver Spoons Nursery School, of course doing the needful. They had it graded and trimmed the edges to make it look neater. That was almost two months ago. Since then, they have not been back.
Well, they did come back in a way, to lay a fresh coat of tarmac on that stretch of road they had forgotten all about. And now, right in the middle of that stretch, a pot hole has sprung up.
And what have they done about fixing it? Nothing but to put a brick in it and some shrubbery to warn us drivers about the danger. Hmm!