The Ministry of Finance has been asked by President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni to disburse six billion shillings right now for the repair of the roads in Kampala, the nation’s capital.
In order to negotiate bilateral trade ties between Serbia and Uganda, Museveni met with a delegation from Serbia on Wednesday at State House Entebbe and issued the order.
“I now order the Ministry of Finance to immediately disburse the 6 billion shillings in contributions due to the KCCA each quarter for road upkeep and pothole repairs. I’ve been informed that just 30% of this money has been released so far this fiscal year, which has led to horrible road conditions and traffic congestion on highways not part of the ADB project.
Additionally, he gave the KCCA Executive Director instructions to update the public on the situation’s status. For the next four years, the 41 roadways under the African Development Bank City Project will be maintained to boost city transportation.
Museveni’s order comes in response to a public uproar that sparked an online protest about the deplorable condition of Kampala’s roads.
An online exhibition of Kampala’s potholes was hosted by Ugandans under the direction of Dr. Spire Ssentongo, a cartoonist and philosophy instructor at Makerere University in Kampala.
During the show on Monday, Ugandans submitted images of several potholes in their separate communities near Kampala on Twitter.
The goal of the show was to draw attention to the terrible condition of the roads and urge the city authorities and the federal government to act.
After the show, City Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago appeared on stage and announced that KCCA was experiencing severe financial difficulties.
As a result, suppliers of asphalt and fuel for engineering vehicles were refusing to provide KCCA because of unpaid invoices.
The city’s Executive Director, Dorothy Kisaka, also released a statement pointing out that the authority only receives roughly 26 billion shillings from the Uganda Road Fund to carry out the duty, despite the need for 75 to 100 billion shillings annually to maintain city roads.
According to Kisaka, they are working with the appropriate government agencies to ensure that the problem is fixed.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Kisaka stated, “We have met with the parliamentary committee to raise awareness of the problems of dead roads, for lack of better words; otherwise, we mean roads that have outlived their useful lives. Kisaka added that in this quarter of the financial year, KCCA shall use part of the released funds to fix sections that fit within the provided budget.
Only 30% of the 2100km of roads in Kampala are paved or tarred, and many of them are in poor condition. By December 2022, the KCCA reported that there were 8,500 square meters of potholes scattered throughout the city’s five divisions.
Therefore, as long as the ADF project is ongoing, the president requested that the Ministry provide the funds for road maintenance.
However, Kisaka emphasized that the KCCA has already begun carrying out building activities for the roughly 70 km of roads that were funded with 288 billion dollars from the African Development Bank (ADB).