Where is Muyembe-Nakapiripirit road govt promised?
In the 2015/2016 Budget speech, page 25-26, the Minister for Finance, Mr Matia Kasaija, said the new road construction and maintenance projects in the country to commence 2016/2017 included the 92-km Muyembe-Nakapiripirit road.
We are now in the fourth financial year since the pronouncement by the minister. The business community in that belt (Sironko, Bulambuli, Kween, and Nakapiripirit districts) have suffered big losses due to the bad road.
It is through this road that the people of Namalu and Loregae sub-counties, Nakapiripirit District transport their produce (upland rice, maize, sorghum, sim-sim and groundnuts). Other things they transport are cattle, sheep and goats to markets. They also buy items from wholesale shops in Mbale, take their children to schools in Mbale and access banking services there.
This road connects to the biggest game reserve in the country (PIAN-UPE Game reserve). We have seen Uganda Wildlife Authority translocating giraffes on this road. It is also the road that cement factories in Tororo use to transport marble and limestone from Karamoja.
During this period, there has been heavy rain that made farmers, businessmen spend more than two days travelling to reach their destinations, a journey which should ordinarily take hours. The losses incurred as a result of such a long delay are very high for the traders.
We are actually asking the concerned ministry to come to our rescue and especially Uganda National Roads Authority to at least grade the road with murram to ease movements of people and goods.
