SGR recruiting workforce as project commences

The Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project is recruiting senior staff as actual works on one of Uganda and East Africa's biggest infrastructure projects begin to take shape.

According to a communiqué, several positions are to be filled among them in the environment, finance and administration, audit, legal, human resource and information technology offices.

Actual construction works on the SGR are expected to start in July 2016, but the land acquisition process for 8,000 acres required for the project has begun.

Construction on the first component of the gigantic 1736km railway line will be on the eastern route stretching from Malaba to Kampala covering a distance of 273km.

"The right of way where the railway will pass has been gazetted, we are already meeting land owners," noted Eng. Kasingye Kyamugambi, the project coordinator a few weeks ago.

The SGR is Uganda's biggest project since independence with its overall cost at about $10b almost half the country's total economic output (GDP). Similar projects have only been done in Kenya and Ethiopia.

The SGR project is being implemented as a regional project. The objective of developing the SGR is to provide seamless operations of a modern, fast, reliable, efficient, and high capacity railway transport system across a region that has been having one of the slowest modes of transportation especially bulk.

This has greatly affected the competitiveness of the region with 95% of the goods still carried through road which makes them expensive as well as adding to the quick tear and wear of the road network.

The SGR project will connect Mombasa to Malaba on the border with Uganda and continue onward to Kampala. It will further run to Kigali in Rwanda with a branch line to Juba in South Sudan. Other branch lines along the route will extend to Kisumu, Kasese and Pakwach and another branch through Vula will connect DR Congo to the North West.

Uganda is spearheading the development of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) network through the ministry of works and transport.