KCCA digs up Eighth Street after 90 days
Potholes on Eighth Street which were refilled have again emerged and need refilling again.
What you need to know:
- KCCA’s acting head of public and corporate affairs, Ms Juliet Bukirwa Muwanguzi, told Daily Monitor in an interview yesterday that the Eighth Street is among the roads in the city that have been earmarked for construction.
Authorities at Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) have again dug up a one-kilometer-long section of Eighth Street in Industrial Area to seal potholes with compacted gravel barely three months after the last repair.
The patchwork being executed by M/s Ali Mubarak, an engineering company, commenced a week ago.
However, the continuous digging and sealing of potholes on city roads not only raises queries on the competence of contractors but also undermines KCCA’s effort to keep the city motorable.
The sealing of potholes on the Eighth Street mirrors a road crisis in the country’s capital city where most of the roads are impassable due to potholes.
For instance in an on-spot audit in February, this reporter counted 223 potholes on Eighth Street, stretching from the Mukwano Road junction to the turn off onto Main Access Road (Ssali stage), which connects to Seventh Street.
Mr Simon Nsubuga, a motorist, said: “This has been the practice on this road for the last five years now and we are tired of it. KCCA should work towards paving the entire road and stop this system of sealing potholes because they resurface after a very short time.”
The engineers we found on site declined to speak to us and referred us to KCCA.
KCCA’s acting head of public and corporate affairs, Ms Juliet Bukirwa Muwanguzi, told Daily Monitor in an interview yesterday that the Eighth Street is among the roads in the city that have been earmarked for construction.
The roads will be bankrolled by the African Development Bank (ADB).
However, Ms Muwanguzi explained that what KCCA is doing now is to seal the potholes to keep them motorable before construction starts.
“Eighth Street has a drainage issue and that is why it needs a complete overhaul. It is one of the roads that have been earmarked for construction and we are hopeful that most roads will be upgraded to ensure mobility,” she said.
She added that KCCA currently operates on a shoe-string budget which has affected their infrastructural projects.
Most of the road and drainage works in the city are bankrolled by development partners in form of loans.
KCCA is struggling to secure Shs714b, which is almost twice their current budget, to implement the Kampala Drainage Master plan which was developed in 2017.
KCCA’s director of engineering and technical services Justus Akankwasa told this newspaper in February that the authority receives Shs25b annually for rehabilitation of roads from the Uganda Road Fund (URF) while the other funding comes from development partners.
KCCA took over a road network of 1,200kms in 2011 but when a new road inventory was conducted in 2015, it was established that the city had a total road network of 2110kms.
But Mr Akankwasa said they have at least paved 620kms of the city’s total road network.
Key funding and infrastructural gaps
• 600kms: Statistics show that only 600kms of the 2,100km road network across the city’s five divisions are paved.
• 1,500 kms: The remaining kilometres of roads that are unpaved in Kampala.
• Shs406b: In the Financial Year 2020/2021, KCCA was allocated Shs406b.
•Shs714b: KCCA is still struggling to secure Shs714b to implement the Kampala Drainage Master plan.
