Dott Services to redo Shs190b Tororo-Mbale-Soroti road
UNRA executive director Ms Allen Kagina (right foreground) and other UNRA engineers during a site visit. PHOTO BY NELSON WESONGA
What you need to know:
“It is disappointing to see that the repair that was done is also not performing. In some places where a snag was repaired that place is also failing. So we will have to sit with the consultant and ask ‘how did you pass this work? You should not have passed this work’.” – Ms Allen Kagina
MBALE
Sections of the Tororo-Mbale-Soroti highway, which President Museveni commissioned in August, are to be redone.
The Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) executive director Allen Kagina says the work done by contractor, Dott Services Limited, is not up to standard.
In some cases, the contractor, Dott Services, used a lot of bitumen.
When the weather is hot, blobs of bitumen form, making the road surface slippery.
In case a vehicle with worn-out treads moves over the blobs, the vehicle could skid and cause an accident.
In other cases, the contractor used less bitumen, which means the aggregate will not hold together for long.
Yet in other cases, the left and right lanes of the highway are uneven with one side smooth while the other is rough.
“The work was not up to standard,” Ms Kagina, who was flanked by two UNRA engineers Isaac Wani and Samuel Muhoozi, said in Soroti District in northeastern Uganda after a site visit on Saturday, June 2.
“There will be a technical investigation [to test all the materials used in rehabilitating this road]...”
UNRA’s site visit was informed by Dott Services request for a certificate of completion of work.
Dott Services needs the certificate for it to claim Shs60 billion, which is the balance of the money for the work done.
The contract price is Shs190 billion
“We shall not pay the contractor [the balance] until he does the work very well,” Mr Muhoozi said.
Dott Services started working on the Tororo-Mbale-Soroti highway in November 2010 and ‘completed’ it in May 2015.
In March 2016, the Daily Monitor reported about the bad state of the road.
A Dott Services director Reddy Prasad said that the road was rehabilitated well.
The UNRA team started its site visit with the Ndaiga Bridge in Tororo District and the River Manafwa bridge site– both in eastern Uganda.
Ndaiga Bridge, which was constructed at Shs14.9 billion, is complete and now in use whereas in Mbale a contractor has now started readying the Manafwa River site for the construction of the bridge.
