The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Officials from Uganda Road Fund have decried inadequate funds allocated for routine road maintenance.
The Uganda Road Fund (URF) was established by an Act of Parliament and started operations in 2010 as a Second Generation fund. Its objective is to finance routine and periodic maintenance of public roads in Uganda from majorly reserved road user charges.
The fund finances the implementation of the Annual Road Maintenance Programmes (ARMP) that is carried out by the Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA), Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) among others.
Appearing before the Parliamentary committee on physical infrastructure on Tuesday, Engineer Ronald Namugera, the URF Manager Policy and Strategy said that the government expects the roads to be adequately maintained, but it is not supporting the fund as much as it should.
Namugera says that their total budget for the financial year 2017/ 2018 was 800 billion shillings but they received 417 Billion shillings which has affected operations of the fund.
According to Namugera, in this financial year, they received 530 Billion Shillings and yet they needed One Trillion shillings for roads all over the country.
Namugera says the stable predictable funding is supposed to improve conditions of roads, and reduce road maintenance costs and at the end reduce the cost of transport.
In 2016, under the UNRA roads periodic maintenance, out of a planned 2,000 kilometres of unpaved roads only 900 kilometres was accomplished. Under routine maintenance, out of a planned 16,000 kilometres, 15,000 were maintained nationwide. Of planned 350 bridges to be maintained, only 85 were achieved.
The sources of funds to support the URF as listed in section 21 of the URF Act, are Road user charges, including fuel levy, transit fees, road license, axle load fines, tolls, weight/distance charges; Traffic and road safety fines.
*****
URN
