What awaits Musisi successor

Tomorrow, Ms Jennifer Musisi will hang up her boots and gloves as Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) executive director after a seven-year tenure.
Ms Musisi announced her exit on October 15 and submitted her resignation letter to the President, indicating she would vacate office on December 15, only 24 hours away.
When Kampala City Council (KCC) was elevated and rebranded KCCA in 2010, President Museveni said he wanted to have a clean city where the new managers would ensure better service delivery and value for money.
For the last seven years, Ms Musisi’s performance has towered over his predecessors’ but so has the budget allocated to her for KCCA operations.
There has been marked improvement in infrastructural development and general service delivery, giving the city a new look.
Her achievements include institutional transformation, human resource development, financial management and revenue performance, infrastructural development, rebranding of KCCA football club and increase of KCCA assets.
However, her exit has also left a lot of unresolved business in the management of the city affairs. Her successor’s in-tray will be brimming with a backlog. Daily Monitor looks at six key challenges KCCA is grappling with that Ms Musisi’s successor must brace himself/herself for.

Budget cuts
Over the last three years, KCCA has experienced budget cuts, which has greatly affected service delivery in the city.
In her resignation letter, Ms Musisi highlighted that low funding has been one of KCCA’s major challenges and told government to prioritise increasing the city’s resource envelope to allow better service delivery.
For instance in 2018/19 budget, KCCA requisitioned Shs650 billion but only Shs477b was approved.
The situation has been worsened by the recent indicative figures from the ministry of Finance, showing that government has again cut KCCA’s budget from the Shs477b further down to Shs382b.
Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago recently expressed concern that Kampala residents will have to pay more taxes to fill up or close the budget gaps.
According to KCCA’s 2018/19 budget, physical planning is one of the worst under-funded directorates, with Shs3 billion.
Besides, KCCA is required to ensure service delivery in all the five divisions of the city, but mayors of these divisions say most of their projects have stagnated due to funding gaps.
Most of the ongoing city infrastructural projects such as upgrade of roads, signaling of city road junctions and drainage channels are funded by the World Bank under the Second Kampala Institutional and Infrastructural Development Project (KIIDP-2).
Currently, KCCA relies heavily on non-tax revenue but Ms Musisi, Mr Lukwago and Kampala minister Beti Kamya collectively admit that money is not enough to top up the budget deficits. With such funding gaps, the incoming KCCA executive director faces an uphill task to negotiate for improved budget support.

Temporary staff
KCCA is facing staffing challenges. This concern has been raised by both city political leaders and MPs before.
While appearing before KCCA’s public accounts committee in March, Ms Musisi said of the current 1,133 staff, only 391 are permanent. The 391 workers, Ms Musisi said, were appointed by Public Service while the 742 were hired by KCCA on four-month renewable contracts.
“There has always been rumours that jobs at KCCA are given on technical know-who, where for one to get a job, they must be related to the top management,” Ms Susan Amero, the former deputy chairperson of Parliament’s Presidential Affairs Committee, which also oversees KCCA operations, told Daily Monitor recently.

Land titles for primary schools
KCCA manages 79 government-aided primary schools. However, 57 out of these have no land titles and owners of land on which they sit have threatened to evict them.
According to statistics from KCCA, only four schools sit on land owned by the Authority while 22 have received lease offers from the various controlling authorities.
The lease offers to the 18 schools were given by the Uganda Land Commission (ULC) and four were from the Buganda Land Board (BLB).
In a previous interview, State minister for Kampala Affairs Benny Namugwanya accused school administrators of conniving with plunderers to steal the land for schools.
Some of the city schools have been demolished under unclear circumstances, paving way for construction of high-rise buildings. These include Shimoni, Nnabagereka, and part of Nakasero Primary School.
The new KCCA boss faces a big task to ensure safety of land for public schools.

Controversy in city markets
According to KCCA statistics, there are currently 51 markets across the five divisions of the city. Of these, 24 are privately owned, 19 are owned and managed by KCCA while eight are owned by Buganda Land Board.
Some of the markets managed by KCCA include Usafi, Wandegeya, Bugolobi, Nakawa, Ntinda, Busega and Nateete. KCCA recently bought land to accommodate Kasubi vendors who have been operating on the road reserve for about 30 years.
However, city markets such as St Balikuddembe (Owino), Nakasero and Kisekka are privately owned by vendors through their respective associations.
Even for markets run by KCCA, complaints abound about mismanagement, revenue collection and general welfare among other issues.
As such, some vendors abandon these markets to seek refuge on streets to eke a living. To date, controversies over leadership persist in both Wandegeya and Usafi markets.

Traffic jam
Ms Musisi leaves behind a master plan on paper to undercut Kampala’s traffic jam. However, this will require a lot of investment and commitment from the new KCCA executive director to enforce its implementation. The plan intends to phase out taxis and boda bodas and replace them with the bus and train transit system.
According to the plan, non-motorised corridors will be gazetted to cater for pedestrians. Currently, there is no non-motorised corridor in Kampala Metropolitan area. The plan is yet to be launched by KCCA. According to statistics from KCCA, only 500km of Kampala’s 2,100km road network is tarmacked. A World Bank report released recently attributes the heavy traffic congestion in the city and the metropolis to lack of public transport.
According to the report, Kampala’s roads are dominated by boda bodas, private cars and taxis, which are estimated to be growing at 11 per cent annually.
On the other hand, the report adds that the omnibus taxis take the majority of passengers despite making up the smallest group of vehicles on the road. The existing roads were constructed in the 1960’s to accommodate about only 100,000 vehicles per day.
However, the report notes that at least 400,000 vehicles use Kampala roads every day. Even the Northern ring road system, which was completed in 2009, now suffers heavy congestion.

Waste disposal
Poor disposal and collection of waste has been one of the challenges causing Ms Musisi administrative headache.
The tonnage of waste generated in the city has been soaring but KCCA’s capacity for disposal in the five divisions is nearly at crisis level. The new KCCA boss must brace for this.
Figures from KCCA’s department of solid waste under the directorate of health and environment show that at least 22,000 tonnes of waste is collected daily from Kampala.
Out of this, KCCA is supposed to collect 1,000 tonnes while the three contractors are supposed to collect 12,000 tonnes.
However, figures show KCCA has capacity to collect only 470 tonnes, leaving 530 tonnes uncollected. The officials blame the problem on shortage of trucks. Apparently, KCCA has only 15 trucks but Ms Musisi told Daily Monitor recently that the city needs at least 50 waste collection trucks to effectively manage the disposal.
Even the hired service providers, KCCA admits, do not have the capacity to collect all the 12,000 tonnes in the city.
KCCA spends about Shs4b annually on waste disposal and Shs3.3b to run the Kiteezi landfill. Kiteezi landfill is already full but KCCA recently acquired 135 acres in Dundu, Mukono to construct new landfill although construction has not started.

Politics at City Hall
Ms Musisi’s term at the helm of KCCA was dogged with political fights, especially with the political wing. She pointed it out in her resignation that incessant political interference in her work was one of the reasons she threw in the towel.
Former KCCA deputy executive director Judith Tukahirwa, who resigned on October 31, 2016, also cited political interference in the work of technocrats at City Hall.
Several directors have quit KCCA on account of their work being frustrated by political interference.
KCCA has both technical and political wings. The technical wing is led by the executive director while the political wing is headed by the Lord Mayor.
Although the KCCA Act outlines the roles of both parties, fights over mandate have persisted and in many occasions paralsying service delivery.
Ms Musisi has been at loggerheads with Mr Lukwago throughout her tenure. Their fights led to the controversial impeachment of Mr Lukwago in 2013, which matter is still a subject of litigation in court although the Lord Mayor returned to office in a fresh mandate in the 2016 elections.
The appointment of Ms Beti Kamya as Kampala Affairs minister in June 2016 did not help matters. Since she assumed office, she has since clashed with both Ms Musisi and Mr Lukwago over city management.
All urban councils are headed by political leaders—mayors with councillors. Every urban council has two Resident City Commissioners (RCCs) appointed by the President.
The political pressure from all these has been a thorn in Ms Musisi’s flesh and is likely to be the same for new KCCA executive director. During the previous interview, when asked what legacy she would like to leave behind, Ms Musisi said; a better city.