By Executive Editor

Members of Parliament on Parliament’s Physical Infrastructure Committee this afternoon asked officials from Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) to explain why the average cost of road construction in the city cost Shs10 billion, saying this cost is four times higher than the cost in other cities like Soroti, whose average cost per kilometer is about Shs2.3 billion.

“Under USMID, a kilometer of road with drainage, street lights, and walkways cost Shs2.3 billion in Soroti. I don’t know where KCCA gets your contractors and materials from; the cost of a kilometer in Kampala is Shs10 billion. You see, there is a variation of Shs7Bn. In KCCA, the cost of a kilometer is four times higher than in other cities, and some of these roads in these upcountry cities are even far better than in Kampala. How do you arrive at the unit cost of a kilometer of road? When you look at the Kulambiro-Kyanja Ring Road, it cost Shs9.2 billion per kilometer,” Jonathan Ebwalu (Soroti West) said.

David Luyimbazi, Deputy Executive Director of KCCA, however, defended the cost of road construction in Kampala due to traffic jams, saying contractors spend more time transporting materials to site, yet the cost of these materials is higher than in the upcountry cities.

“When you come to urban roads in Kampala, you have traffic management costs; those are unseen costs. For Kampala roads, we emphasize that they must be night-working so that we minimize disruption of economic activities, which means we need to have night-working infrastructure. If you are going to purchase murram, you can’t compare the land value in Kampala with Soroti, Luyimbazi said.

He added that “the price of gravel is much higher; to get a rock, you need to go much higher; everywhere there is traffic jam; if you are getting on site, you take much longer; in traffic, there is no traffic.”

“So these are variables that a layman may not see but a contractor must anticipate in his costing,” Luyimbazi said.

Credit: Parliament Watch