The minister of Works and Transport, Gen Edward Katumba Wamala has appealed to local contractors to form special purpose vehicles so that they can be able to pool resources and work together as a team.
Katumba explained that the formation of special purpose vehicles will help local contractors to address some of the issues regarding personnel, capacity, and equipment since they cannot all have the same abilities in terms of resources.
He made the remarks during the Ugandan National Association of Building and Civil Engineering Contractors (UNABCEC) 28th annual general meeting that took place at Imperial Royale Hotel, Kampala.
During the meeting there was a panel debate where discussants raised a number of issues affecting the local contractors in the country.
Experts, among other issues, noted that construction companies have challenges in a typical way of conventional financing and are usually short of security.
The chief engineer at the Ministry of Works and Transport, Samson Bagonza said the initial process of classifying and registering road contractors was unsuccessful because there was no sensitisation of the system among contractors.
He said Uganda is in the process of redoing the exercise.
“Contracting is like a church calling. You are building infrastructure for the country. To succeed, you must maintain quality and timely execution of work and business will come,” said Bagonza.
On the issues raised by the panelists, Katumba assured the contractors that some of the unfair laws are going to be addressed because they have already submitted a cabinet paper highlighting the issues which need to be addressed.
“Issues such as the classification, the issues that you talked about like the government having an equipment pool where people can come and borrow equipment are all issues which we have in the cabinet paper,” he said.
He promised contractors that his ministry is ready and willing to listen to their issues.
During the meeting, UNABCEC also elected new office bearers for the board of directors that will oversee the associations for the next three years that is from 2022 to 2024.
Jamesone Olonya, the president of UNABCEC encouraged members to work together to gain the capacity required to execute mega projects.
