Half of Tororo-Kamdini road works will be completed next year – Unra  

The Uganda National Roads Authority (Unra) has said the Soroti-Lira-Kamdini road will receive new road pavement by October 31, 2024.
 
This section is part of the North Eastern Road Corridor (Tororo-Kamdini) currently being reconstructed by the government under the North Eastern Road Corridor Asset Management Project (NERAMP).
 
The road will link the Kenyan border of Malaba through Tororo to the northern and the northwestern border of South Sudan and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, facilitating transportation of goods and other services to the general public.
 
This output performance-based road contracts, the first pilot project being undertaken in Uganda, is being implemented under Unra as the employer and it is co-funded by the World Bank and the government of Uganda.
 
Eng Jackson Nawaswa, the contract manager, confirmed the development, adding that the World Bank is giving 96 per cent of the funding for the project while the government of Uganda is giving four per cent.
 
“We are doing this project on the road link from Tororo through Mbale, Soroti, Lira up to Kamdini. This project is 340 kilometres,” he told this publication on Saturday.
 
The country’s first longest road project covering a distance of 340 kilometres has been awarded to a Portuguese firm – Mota-Engil Africa.
 
“What has transpired so far is that we have finished the designs of the road and we are now embarking on the implementation or the actual construction of the road as designed,” Eng Nawaswa added.
 
He assured road users that the contractor is fully mobilised as they might have seen in the previous months.
 
The contractor started implementing the designs in November 2022 and so far, 20 per cent of the overall works has been achieved, according to Unra.

According to Eng Nawaswa, about 20 kilometres of a finished pavement has been constructed on the Lira-Kamdini stretch.
 
“Of course I’m not talking about other layers but I know we are interested in seeing the finished road. And we anticipate that by October 31, 2024, the section starting from Soroti through Lira up to Kamdini will have received the new road pavement as designed,” he added.
 
He said this project is going to be beneficial because it’s a trans-national link.
 
Road users’ voices
 
Ms Josephine Omara Olili, the Resident District Commissioner (RDC) of Kole, where Tororo-Kamdini road passes, applauded the government of Uganda for the project.
 
She said the road will enable farmers especially those from the Lango Sub-region to ensure they reach different markets including Kampala City, Juba, and DR Congo, and beyond easily.
 
“We have been having the worst road with a lot of potholes but I’m glad to report that through the initiative of the government of Uganda, we are now able to have the best road,” she told this publication at her office last Wednesday.

“My message to our road users is that good things normally come with their bad parts. So, I don’t want people to be over excited, I am appealing to them that let’s be careful on the road; let’s follow the road signs and we ensure that we move in a recommended way so that you reach safely,” Ms she added.   

Mr Moses Eboyu, a taxi driver, thanked the government and the World Bank for co-funding the rehabilitation of the North Eastern Road Corridor.
 
“Some sections of the road are now okay. It’s very smooth. It’s not like those days before the rehabilitation works commenced. Before it had a lot of potholes and corrugations. We used to spend a lot of money repairing our vehicles because when you hit potholes, we break springs and repairing each spring costs between Shs80,000 and Shs100,000 but now the road is just very okay,” he said.
 
Mr Samuel Gumisiriza, a truck driver, said: “Some companies when constructing the road put big humps which damage our trucks but this is not the case on Tororo-Kamdini road.”   
About NERAMP  
The contract, which commenced effectively around August 2018, has three components: engineering (works), project management and monitoring, and social risks management.