MPs save Unra in last-minute fight over merger

Members of Parliament by acclamation last evening stopped the government plan to subsume Uganda National Roads Authority (Unra) under its parent Works and Transport ministry.

The lawmakers, however, supported a proposal, moved by MPs Denis Oguzu (Maracha; FDC) and Muhammad Nsereko (Kampala Centra; Ind), to amend the 2006 Unra Act to grant the minister responsible for road sector more executive powers for better oversight.

“Unra will remain as it is, but you (Works minister) will bring an amendment; meaning, if I put the question now, the nays have it,” Speaker Anita Among said at the conclusion of session where contributing legislators rooted for retention of the agency.

She exhorted Parliament to support the amendment whenever presented.  

In voting against the Unra Repeal Bill 2024, Speaker Among urged the committee on Rationalisation of Agencies and Public Expenditure (RAPEX) to table a Bill that harmonises the salaries of heads of parastatals and agencies before the House.

She described as “very illogical for one person in an institution” to earn between Shs50m and Shs60m when an MP “representing a constituency earns Shs6m from the same government”.

“It should not only be [ministry of Works], but it should also be across board,” Ms Among said, renewing longstanding demand that the government establish a Salary Review Commission to regularise remuneration for all public servants.

The Unra Executive Director, Ms Allen Kagina, is reportedly among the top earners in government alongside the Bank of Uganda (BoU) governor, Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) commissioner general, Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) executive director, and the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) managing director.

Their pay and that of employees in government agencies and parastatals are generally higher than for counterpart staff at ministries, even when holding similar qualifications, experience and responsibilities, leading to friction as the underpaid supervise the higher earners. 

The Unra Repeal Bill is one of the merger Bills tabled before the House yesterday and it, among others, sought to streamline and transfer the functions of Unra to the Works ministry as part of wider restructuring to make the government leaner and more effective and save taxpayers’ money.

Proponents hoped absorbing Unra, which employs more than 1,442 staff, under Works ministry would eliminate ambiguities, duplication and waste.

“If we mainstream and all these people come under the main public service structure, we shall be saving Shs39b in wages only per month without taking about other overheads. That is a very big saving and that money can construct a number of roads,” said Works minister, Gen Katumba Wamala, failing to sway lawmakers who appeared to have their own mind.

MP Nathan Byanyima (Bukanga North; NRM), who said the Infrastructure Committee of Parliament midwifed the Bill that led to eventual creation of Unra, yesterday said disbanding or contracting the entity under its parent ministry would be a “disaster”. 

The fight to save the roads agency came amid reports that organisations were lobbying and fighting behind the scenes to remain untouched in the mergers. 

Minister Katumba had submitted to the House that Unra’s wage Bill is 71b for 1,442 staff, while the 2,109 staff under the Works and Transport programme cost the ministry Shs90.92b.

Of all the 33 agencies and departments proposed for merger, none captured imagination and attention like Unra which, with Shs2.4 trillion annual budget this year, is a financial elephant in town.   

Until the Financial Year 2020/2021 when the Covid-19 pandemic upended the local and global economy, Works and Transport—and specifically Unra—took the lion’s share of the national budget for -prioritised road infrastructure development.

The government first outlined infrastructure development (dams, roads and railway) as key priority areas in 2006 following which Unra enjoyed an exponential budget increment from 2015, opening it to scrutiny over bitumenised roads against bigger budget.

MP Byanyima told yesterday’s sitting that the paved roads in the country had increased from about 1,000 kilometres when Unra was founded to 7,000 kilometres, although statistics on Works ministry website indicates 5,591 kilometres by 2022. 

Critics argued that while it is easy to drive from the capital, Kampala, to any of the country’s border points on paved roads, there are big concerns about the authority’s rehabilitation of the same roads. Case in point is the Kampala-Fort Portal road; the section between Mityana and Mubende rugged—almost impassable— yet rehabilitation of the road has been ongoing for almost five years now.

The Kampala-Jinja road is in a bad state, while the section around the Mabira forest on Jinja highway has almost disintegrated. The Karuma–Olwiyo–Pakwach–Nebbi–Arua road has been crumbling for years, with delayed and slower rehabilitation, just like several national roads around the country. 

Unra executives often blame budgetary constraints on this state of affairs, with the Authority sitting on Shs1 trillion debt to contractors, both foreign and local.

Unra received Shs364 billion to cover part of the debt in the supplementary budget passed by Parliament last week.

With the economy recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic and other international pressures that forced the Treasury to readjust all the previous financial year budgets amid low domestic revenue mobilisation, financing to Unra has also suffered a knock.

Insiders said this means new road construction projects have to be put on hold longer, while contractors on government-funded road projects have to work longer without pay.

From boom to bust
Following enactment of the Unra Act in 2006, the Authority was operationalised in 2008 with specific mandate of developing and maintaining the national road network and advising on general roads policy. 

From 2010 to 2015, it turned into a fodder for media, with exposés of graft in award of road tenders and allegations of billions of shillings being misappropriated by officials chasing the gravy train.

President Museveni in May 2015 tapped the then former Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) Commissioner General Allen Kagina to head Unra. Later in June, the President instituted a seven-member Commission of Inquiry, chaired by High Court Judge Catherine Bamugemereire, into the mismanagement of the Authority since its inception in 2008.  

Over the period of its existence, the Commission determined that the net impact of corruption was “significant”. For instance, the Commission detailed that Unra over seven years had received nearly Shs9 trillion for road construction and maintenance, which according to rates published by the African Development Bank (AfDB) could have constructed 5,147km of similar roads in markets in Africa and beyond.

However, only 1,500km of roads were built and at least Shs4 trillion was misappropriated, monies which could have paved an additional 3,647km.

The corruption, according to the Commission, thrived as a result of collision between contractors/consultants with the Unra staff, absence of oversight, delayed action on the Auditor General reports, incompetent legal advisory services to the body’s contracts committee, among others.

Hardly any suspect was brought to book while the Commission of Inquiry’s report was later challenged in court. Sections of the inquiry report were eventually quashed by the High Court.
This, as the cost of roads per kilometre kept going up.

Two years to Unra’s birth, the most expensive contract awarded was the 43-kilometre Kampala-Zirobwe road at $880,000, at the time Shs1.6b, per kilometer hinged to the high quality that was required to meet the standard axle loads, since the road is an urban highway. Today, the cost per km is upwards of $1.2m.

Officials at that time attributed this trend largely to increase in prices of fuel (petroleum) lubricants used on most road projects; the price of a barrel having jumped from $26 in 2000 to $70 in 2007 and a barrel of bitumen (tarmac) from approximately Shs250,000 in 2000 to Shs850,000 in 2007. 

On numerous occasions records also show consultants and engineers quoting conflicting prices for the same projects.

Under Kagina’s administration, Unra has registered fewer scandals. Sources familiar with the sector say that the proposal to merge Unra under its parent ministry was partly informed by Ms Kagina’s protracted fight with highly-connected tenderpreneurs and brokers over road contracts.

However, several stakeholders have over the last nine years called into question the number of kilometres of roads Unra has tarmacked under her despite taking a substantial portion of the national budget.

According to Unra’s state of performance report released last November, the total paved stock of the national road network stood at 6,133 km (29 percent) while the road network in fair-to-good condition has been 95.7 percent for paved and 73 percent for unpaved roads.

The feud 

The Minister of Works and Transport, Gen Katumba Wamala yesterday told Parliament that taking Unra under his ministry would save the country Shs39b monthly in wages, paid to the over 1,400 employees at the Authority.

Gen Katumba, who said the money could be used for infrastructural services, called on MPs to back the govt proposal. 

‘‘To restructure and re-organise these agencies and departments of government, we want to eliminate bloated structures and functional ambiguities in government. Agencies operate bloated structures which aren’t aligned to the mandates and are a drain to the treasury, thus defeating one of the objectives of cost cutting,’’ said GenWamala .

Mr Dan Kimosho, the chairperson of Parliament Physical Infrastructure Committee, told Parliament that taxpayers would have to dig deeper into their pockets to raise Shs227.24b as compensation for abolishing Unra. 

‘‘In the Certificate of Financial Implications, Shs11.562b had been mentioned as terminal benefits for Unra staff, yet from the interactions, it became apparent that Unra would require Shs227.24 billion as severance package for staff. This is a huge cost which would erode the stated savings from the merger,’’Mr Kimosho said.

The mergers 

Proponents of the Unra merger cited the agency’s staff structure of 1,442, even when the approved structure is 1,480, high salaries paid to staff contrasted with their contemporaries in ministry of Works, and the failure to executive its mandate as reasons to clip its wings and size.

However, the Parliamentary Infrastructure Committee which scrutinised the Unra Repeal Bill recommended that the agency be retained as a semi-autonomous body.

It noted: “Unra has delivered the objectives of the reforms that led to its formation. These are commercialisation, improved condition of the roads network, improved financing, efficient management of national roads and introduction of stable financing/user charges.

The sector, therefore, should rather be consolidating these gains and making further improvements than halting the current momentum and restarting afresh.”

During plenary yesterday, MP Nathan Byanyima (Bukanga North; said Unra had “done a commendable job” and subsuming it under Works ministry would scale back the country’s infrastructure development gains.

The plan to merge government agencies was first mulled in 2018. Consequently, the ministry of Public Service recommended to Cabinet that out of the 157 agencies reviewed, 80 should be retained as semi-autonomous agencies; 33 agencies should have their mandate and functions mainstreamed to their relevant line ministries; 35 agencies should be consolidated or merged into 19 entities.

Cabinet in 2022 gave nod to the experiment the merger with the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) which was folded back into the ministry of Energy.

Several stakeholders including parliament raised flag about the merger but a parliamentary ad hoc committee in its report issued in February 2022  gave nod to the proposal to merge  certain agencies on account of among others duplicated mandates and  functions and overlaps amongst agencies, functional ambiguities depicting mix-up of policy, regulation and implementation, un-harmonised legal frameworks within which some of the agencies operate, and bloated structures of some agencies which are not aligned to their mandates.

There are 157 public agencies and 22 ministries, and the Offices of the President and the Prime Minister, respectively.

On February 2, 2024, President Museveni urged MPs of his ruling NRM party to support the merger of agencies and departments arguing that it will save the government Shs1trillion annually.

On February 20, the Attorney General tabled 39 Bills for merger of agencies and departments which kicked off intensive lobbying by managers of some of the affected entities to be spared the folding.

Besides Unra, other agencies that have so far survived the merger include National Forestry Authority (NFA), Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA), and National Information Technology Authority-Uganda (NITA-U). President Museveni has since rejected the retaining of NITA-U.