Residents of Wagagi village in Nkoma ward in Mbale City’s Northern Division have destroyed part of the newly worked on road accusing the contractor of shoddy works.
The road that is being constructed using funding from Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda through the Participatory Slums Upgrading Program which aims at improving the livelihood of communities living in slums. The contractor of the project is procured by community associations and this case, the SENKULU UNITED SACCO was given money and procured Haji Zakalia Enterprises Limited to work on the road at the cost of 36 million.
The residents’ bitterness stemmed from the nature of marram and culverts that were put on the road and the size of the road which according to them was very narrow.
According to them, they raised alarm from the start during the initial stage of opening of the road when the contractor diverted the road from where the original coordinates and the poor quality of materials that are being used on the project.
“They marram they have brought for us is of poor quality, the road is narrow and the culverts put on t the road are also of a bad quality” the residents said.
Rogers Wandulu, a resident of Wagagai said, the contractor brought a grader as early as 5:00am to start grading the road using the poor quality marram which residents rejected when it was brought. He said that the culverts put on the road which installed three days ago broke by the grader that was grading the marram and the residents decided to protest the whole project.
“The grader came early morning in the night and the grader itself broke the culverts that were installed on the road that is why the residents decided to protest” Wandulu noted.
YAhaya Kiti, the LCII of Nkoma Ward who is also the LCIII Chairperson of NRM in Northern Division tasked the Engineers from Haji Zakalia Memorial Enterprise, the company working on the road to produce BOQs of the road they filed to them.
“I asked the engineer, to come with the Bills of Quantities but he failed, we wanted to see the quality of the materials and what is being worked on the road and compare with what is on the BOQs” he said.
Abdallah Magambo, the Mbale City Deputy Speaker said the challenge of shoddy works cuts across all the roads that are under the same project. He cited Mission Link Road which is under the same project as one that has also been shoddily done. According to him the project that the contractor has received all the 28 million shillings of the project but the works are poorly done.
“Contractors are doing very shoddy works, look at the type of marram they are putting on the road” Abdallah noted.
The Chairperson of Senkulu United SACCO Asuman Wadada Tabu said that he told the contractor to fully open up the road before proceeding with any other works but this was not followed. He wondered why the grader was brought the dark hours of the morning.
“I told these people never to do anything on the road unless they fully open it, I even wonder how a contractor brought in a grader to begin working at 5:00 in the morning” he said.