Uganda Road Fund launches survey to gauge satisfaction of road users

Uganda Road Fund(URF) has launched a countrywide survey to seek views of road users over the status of roads in the country.

This comes as a result of increased cost of maintaining roads, which the URF estimates to be sky rocketing to over sh 2 trillion annually.

Dr Andrew Naimanye, the acting executive director of the URF,who was launching the 2021 Road User Satisfaction Survey(RUSS), said a lot of money is required to strengthen maintenance of the country's road infrastructure in some parts particularly the central region where the network continues to deteriorate.

He noted that the loss in value of some of the country's road network could have an impact on the actual economy and ultimately weaker value for money.

He stated that URF,as the agency mandated to finance routine and periodic maintenance of all public roads, strives to ensure that its operations are designed for the provision of the best services to road users by maintaining a high degree of responsiveness to their needs.

"It undertakes periodic road user satisfaction surveys as a mechanism through which road users can provide feedback to the Fund and its stakeholders on the quality of service provision in the road asset,"he said.

Naimanye said that the outcome of the survey will be used to strengthen planning and more efficiency in road infrastructure services

The survey involves randomly selecting and interviewing road users at predetermined points on all categories of public roads, including national roads, which UNRA manages, Kampala City roads, district roads and urban roads managed by municipal authorities, cities and town councils.

A sample of 5,460 road users from Seven road user groups, namely pedestrians; cyclists; motorcyclists; passengers,saloon car drivers; bus/matatu drivers; and truck drivers, shall be targeted for an interview during the survey.

The overall objective of the survey is to provide outcome accountability and a monitoring mechanism through which road users provide feedback to providers of services in the road sector.

The survey will be undertaken in Kampala City and each of the four regions of the country including Northern, Eastern, Central, and Western regions.

Kampala has been treated as a separate region primarily because of being the capital and it being the business and transport hub of the region.

Key aspects of the survey will be general satisfaction with the road network, rating of the performance of road agencies on various aspects, rating of availability of roadside services and amenities, road users' perceptions about road safety, driver behaviour, and opinions on cross-cutting issues in the sector among others.