KCCA engineers should be problem solvers

Jan 27, 2015

On one Saturday morning as I was driving to work in a down pour, I was able to witness chunks of water that was flowing over the surface of almost all roads in Kampala.

By Benon Fred Twinamasiko

On one Saturday morning as I was driving to work in a down pour, I was able to witness chunks of water that was flowing over the surface of almost all roads in Kampala.

This was coming in from the feeder roads and paths to residencies. This water always consists of mud and sometimes stones of all sizes.

The speed of these stones always creates increased friction with the gravel which leads to a couple of gravel that makes the road to rip off and potholes to emerge. Even if the water has no stones, if it flows consistently and regularly over the same place, it will succeed in ripping off a couple of gravel pieces and eventually five rise to a pothole.

A better evidence of such potholes is the surface of the lower side of Jinja Road; every spot where water crosses from the upper side to the lower side, there is a pothole or a sign of a developing one. In order to solve the drainage in Kampala, KCCA Engineers have to regularly get out into the heavy rains and model the flow of water to determine where it flows from.

For safety, technologies CCTVs can be installed on key spots for the same purpose of monitoring the water flow. For electrical engineers, it is easy to design the flow of electricity while seated on their office desks and they would get the feedback from the customers if they have power or are in a blackout.

This is different in case of the civil engineers who would be building the water drainage systems; they need to witness the flow themselves, where the water is flowing to, at what rate and in what quantities.

Until when we have a workforce that gathers experiences every other day in order to make improvements, we shall have quite a long way to go in order to solve our most occurring problems. This same problem is experienced from how teachers are not able research about how the things they are teaching are related to the day to day life applications. A teacher is supposed to be a lifetime learner and the engineer should be a life time consultant and this makes him or a lifetime learner as well.

The planners hand in hand with the engineers should be able to come up with a master plan that makes a given city have an integrated look, for example, why should a road be constructed and after commissioning it, then, telecom companies start digging out trenches for laying their cables, a habit that has completely continued to spoil our nice roads?

The interdependence of different sectors of the Government, should help in coming up with a product that has shared responsibility. Another example; why should Makerere University, a public institution pay tax on donated science equipment, when the Government itself cannot afford procuring such equipment for research, or should we blame various clearing agents and shipping companies playing accomplice to fleece the University of money?

My understanding would be when a Department or College in Makerere declares an equipment as a research equipment, all the Uganda Revenue Authority should be doing would be to ascertain that such equipment is for Research otherwise most donors are having it hard to offer a helping hand only to be told that such equipment is stuck at the airport when it should be performing research.

Much as some members in such institutions like public universities may misuse the tax holiday, but there are equipments that cannot clearly be owned by an individual or traded in by an individual.

When we get an interwoven network of Government departments, the sky will be the limit.

The writer a Makerere University lecturer

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