By Jessica Sabano
Officials handling the construction of the Mukono-Katosi road have blamed the Uganda National Road Authority (Unra) Land Acquisition office for failing to compensate residents in time to vacate their land for road construction, noting that the failure would affect the scheduled completion date.
The project engineer Joseph Mbazira on Friday said up to now some residents have not yet been compensated and there is no way they can vacate which is slowing down the construction works.
He added that they have, and are only working on the areas where residents were compensated. Mr Mbazira said the project which started on January, 2015, and is scheduled to be completed in July, 2017 meaning that the original contract period is 911days.
“We thought by this time we would have done 75 per cent of the work but we have only covered 60 per cent. Therefore, we are behind with 15 per cent and this is due to compensation,” he said.
He added that 28 kilometers of the road have fully been completed with the upper surface/final layer.
The project road section is 74.2km of Mukono-Katosi (26.5km) and Kisoga -Nyenga (47.7km) estimated to cost Shs254 billion and the works certified up to date is Shs94 billion representing 36.88 per cent of the project cost according to Mr Mbazira.
In 2013, Katosi project stalled after Shs24 billion was paid to a shadowy company.
Read: Former UNRA chief pins Byandala on Katosi scam
The ACE Consulting Engineer Moharram Bakoum said that the road starts from Watoni junction, has two stretches and one bridge and it connects to Buikwe and Jinja districts.
He also said they found new sections of 10 swamps that have been identified and yet the initial design only identified two swamps.
“These more swamps have also delayed the works as they need three months to be treated, filled and surfaced,” Mr Bakoum told Daily Monitor.
Patrick Onyok, the assistant resident engineer said they also had a problem with the Standard Gauge Railway who said Unra was encroaching on their railway land and this has affected 1km of the road. He added that increased demands from the community for access roads have also affected the road construction.
Unra land acquisition officer Stella Nakimbugwe said in a telephone interview that they are going to compensate all the residents before the end of this month. She also said the problem was about revaluation of the project noting that some residents were undervalued.
“We had to repeat the process after some residents complained of being undervalued but they are going to receive the payments at the end of this month so that the road construction can go on smoothly,” she said.