The Executive Director of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), says the poor state of roads in Kampala is due to not having enough funds. She however notes that government recently released funds and the fixing of the damaged roads will begin soonest.
She made the remakes in response to Ugandans who have been using Twitter to showcase potholes in Kampala City.
Under the hashtag #KampalaPotholeExhibition, different social media users shared photos of roads with potholes across the city, with many of them castigating the government for turning a blind eye on the deteriorating road conditions in the different parts of the city.
According to Kisaka, the Authority is fully aware of the pothole infested roads and has been working within the existing means to fix them.
“We can not trivialise the issue of potholes in the city, its real and needs attention because it affects the well-being of road users. Potholes drive up road user costs through frequent vehicle repairs, long travel times, high accident rates, and others,” Kisaka said in a statement.
She also said that KCCA routinely monitors and collects data on the state of the city roads through the road condition surveys. By December 2022, KCCA had recorded an area of 8,500 square meters of potholes spread across the five divisions.
She explained that on December, KCCA started to work on the potholes in earnest with the funding that was available.
“That intervention covered 37 roads, in five divisions. Kisaka also enumerated another 31 roads, which are in perfect condition,” she said.
However, Kisaka added that in this final quarter of the financial year, 2022-23, the Government of Uganda has now released the development budget that had been withheld in past quarters.
The fixing of the roads is going to commence using the funds availed and cover the potholes as much as the funds can.
Over the years KCCA has put emphasis on improving urban mobility and connectivity in order to spur economic growth in Kampala and Uganda. Today, KCCA has a tarmacked road network of 646 kilometers of roads in Kampala.
A number of these roads were constructed with funding from the World Bank and the Government of Uganda, under the Second Kampala Institutional and Infrastructure Development Project (KIIDP2) which ended in 2021.
These roads are wide, tarmacked, some have double lanes in each direction, junctions fitted with traffic lights, walkways, street lighting, and road signs to guide motorists and pedestrians.