The issue of bad roads remains unsolved and festering in Mbale city.
What is certain is that most of the city’s roads, particularly those in the annexed subcounties, are in a deplorable, terrible, and pathetic state and are non-motorable, especially during this rainy season, and continue to drag residents back in their bid for better living conditions.
The state of the roads in Mbale city has become a matter of concern to both locals and their leaders, for which they call for urgent action to redress the problem.
“The current state of roads in this city presents a risk to life for cyclists and damage to motor vehicles; those responsible for the maintenance of roads in this city are utterly failing us because the state of our roads is an embarrassment,” Geofrey Nandah, a boda boda rider in the city, said.
Mbale City has a total area of 509 kilometers. Some of the roads in bad state include Yoweri Kaguta Museveni Road in the Industrial Division, Namayonyi Road in the Northern Division, Namabasa Road, Musoto Road, which connects to Butaleja district, Busano Road, which connects to Mbale district, Busamaga-Bufumbo Road, and Nakaloke Namagumba Road, which connects to Mbale Sironko Road, among others.
Musa Kasaja, the Speaker of the Industrial City Division, said that the roads in his division are in a dire state, especially during this rainy season. He said that the roads not only need rehabilitation but total reconstruction with a proper drainage system.
According to him, some of the roads are badly worked when soil instead of marram is used during rehabilitation. He said the soil is always easily washed away by the running water.
“The roads in Industrial Division are in a bad state; they don’t only require rehabilitation but reconstruction, especially Yoweri Kaguta Road, Musoto Road, and all roads in Namatala,” he said.
Kasaja says that the poor state of the roads affects the movement of people and their merchandise, adding that Mbale is being prepared to be a tourism city, so the bad roads can easily scare away tourists.
“The bad roads in the city are affecting the movement of our people and their goods; the tourists are also being scared away because of these naughty roads, which in turn affects revenue generation for both the people and the city council,” he noted.
Abdallah Magambo, the Deputy Speaker of Mbale City Council, blamed the problem of bad roads on the government’s delays in releasing funding. He said besides the delays, the government also cut the budget for the amount of money that the council is supposed to receive.
“There is delay and cuts to funding; it is the reason we have these roads in a bad state,” he said, adding that the city council lacks a grader that could be used to work on them.
According to Magambo, there is a need for the council to use the locally generated revenue to purchase its own grader rather than keep begging from the district.
“We need to buy our own grader just to avoid the delays in the rehabilitation of these roads rather than begging from the district; the city cannot afford to continue losing critical opportunities due to bad roads,” he added.
The Nakaloke-Namagumba Road, whose construction has stalled despite receiving funding, is one of the roads in poor condition. The work on the 1.9 billion shillings, which included tarmacking, was supposed to be complete by June this year, but no progress is being made on the site.
Residents in the city, especially those residing in the areas or sub counties that were annexed from the former municipality to form the city, say the bad state of the roads has made it hard for them to move from one place to another. They wonder why they are called a city, yet the state of facilities and services they receive is more similar to those they received when they lived in the former district.
The Mbale City Clerk, Ambrose Ochen, said that the challenge they have is the lack of road equipment to work on the roads in the city, noting that they currently depend on the equipment from the Mbale district local government.
He said that the city authorities’ plan is to buy a grader to help in the rehabilitation of the roads in the city, especially in the areas of the annexed subcounties, and added that they are waiting for the fourth quarter funds.
“We are waiting for the fourth quarter funding to help us maintain the roads, and some work is already underway. The only challenge, and it is the major one, is that we don’t have equipment. We have a very old grader from Chaina that keeps on breaking, which is a bit of a challenge,” he said.
There have been calls by local authorities in the city for deeper remedies to the deplorable state of roads; they say there is a need to relinquish some roads like the Mugisu Hill and Nabuyonga Rise to the Central Government for appropriate funding.
The increasing dilapidation of road infrastructure across the various geopolitical zones of the country has prompted calls for an increase in the road fund.
Over the decades, investment in road projects has not been commensurate with the boost in economic activity. Very often, the condition of roads is a mismatch between public spending on the roads and their condition, and it is time to pay greater attention to road development that can stand the test of time and the environmental variables of the regions. It is wasteful and illogical to keep repairing roads with huge sums every year.