Billions reaped out of Malaba's rotten truck yard

The jams and long truck queues stretched over 20km on the Kenya side and 5km on the Uganda side, causing a serious traffic problem to both pedestrians and motorists for over two weeks.

President Yoweri Museveni when meeting with the URA team led by Commissioner General Allen Kagina and Ministers; Janat Mukwaya(Trade and Industry), Mr John Nasasira (Works and Transport) and Finance State Ministers at Port Spring Villa Hotel Malaba on October 30, said that he had not been happy with long queues and truck jams he had seen on his way to Nairobi for an IGAD Summit on October 27 and on his return on October 30.

Faced with the challenge of containing the strike, URA panicked and initiated a meeting with the drivers leaders. The drivers gave 30 days for the yard to be fixed.
The remedial works expected to cost over Shs100 million shillings started during the last week of October, but drew more concern; It was very shoddy and not worth the stated amount.

Tororo RDC Hashaka voiced his concern first. He condemned the shoddy work, describing it as "a corruption cancer in the URA which was tarnishing the image of government."
During the meeting with President Museveni at Port Spring Villa Hotel Malaba on October 30, Mr Hashaka clashed with the URA boss Kagina over the shoddy work and what he termed as "lack of seriousness" by the URA in trying to get a long lasting solution for the Malaba yard.

When the clash began to take an ugly direction with Ms Kagina pompously telling Mr Hashaka that he was wasting his time reporting her to the President who would do nothing to her, Mr Museveni calmed down the situation by asking both of them to submit reports to his office within a week.

"I submitted my report just the next day and maintained my stand on the matter. We cannot accept a few individuals to mess up programmes which are meant to benefit the population and build the country's economy, by portraying a negative image on the government," Mr Hashaka told Sunday Monitor.

This yard has two faces; the beautiful and the ugly one. The beautiful one got the face-lift between 2000 and 2002 from the current state of the ugly side.

That face-lift also came after several quarrels and strikes by drivers as is the case today. But a major crusade was also conducted by this newspaper in exposing the rotten facility from which government earned billions of shillings but neglected.