MPs inspect USMID road projects in newly created cities

The scrutiny of the nearly $200 million World Bank funded municipal roads needs to be enhanced given the glaring limitations around value for money on the part of contracting firms.

This conclusion was arrived at during an inspection of USMID roads in Jinja City by MPs from the 22 municipalities and cities of the country.

Jinja West MP, Timothy Batuwa said the city received little money which could not do much.

"USMID, gave us very little money which us under Shs  21 billion. We are not able to do much with this kind of funding. Government and the World Bank needs to help us widen the resource envelope in order for us to ensure the the infrastructure in our city is functional," he said.

Alex Ruhunda, the Fort Portal Central Division MP said the new cities should strive to have good quality and well maintained infrastructure.

"There is also need to keep the city clean, as we have seen a lot of litter particularly polythene bags poorly disposed along the new roads," Ruhunda said.

Betty Naluyima, the Wakiso Woman MP, decried the open trenches and the manholes that did not have covers. She urged the contractors to rectify this.

Bernard Mbayo, the speaker of Jinja City told the MPs that they have only been able to do only two kilometres of roads out of a total three kilometres covered under the USMID project.

"We need more capital investment across the new cities. Imagine we have over 400km as a city that needs tarmacking. But if we are only doing 3 to 4 kms per year, it will take us over 100 years [to do all of them]," Mbayo said.