Africa-Press – Uganda. Last week, Ms Dorothy Kisaka, the executive director of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), told the media in Kampala that at least Shs100 billion was required to fix a number of the capital city’s road. Most of them are in a state of disrepair due to inadequate and delayed funding.
The President directed that the capital be availed with funds for road maintenance, but the problem is not peculiar to Kampala. All urban councils find themselves with roads which have served well beyond their lifespans, but all of them have road maintenance bills that they cannot pick.
Whereas the Uganda Road Fund (URF) has been asking the Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) and all local governments to prioritise routine maintenance to make roads motorable throughout the year, this cannot be achieved. There is no funding to allow for such routine maintenance.
The likelihood that construction of roads will go through water basins or swamps; that the topography is almost always going to be challenging; that the cost of bitumen, fuel and other road imports is certain to be high; or that the cost of acquiring a right of way is much higher than it is in other countries will always make road construction very expensive in Uganda.
This calls for an urgent rethink on the part of all actors in the road sector. We urgently need to find cheaper ways of making and maintaining roads.
The country needs to urgently embrace new, but highly cost-effective technologies like the use of concrete pavers or polymer fiber for highways and roads in the cities and municipalities. Both technologies are suitable for construction of new roads and rehabilitation and maintenance.
Another plus is that they are labour intensive. One needs so many men to be able to for lay slabs on an entire highway. This should be very good news at a time when the country is grappling with youth unemployment.
One of the biggest shortcoming in our road maintenance pogrammes is lack of monitoring and rapid response teams to report and fix potholes as soon as they occur. This is costing the country. That is why it is important that we should return the public works departments and road maintenance teams on our road even as we work to embrace new technologies. That is the kind of long-term fix that we need.
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