Arua City earmarks sh600m to fast-track road maintenance

Arua City Council has earmarked shillings 800 million to kick start stalled road works.

Shillings 600 million is being allocated for road maintenance in three constituencies — Ayivu West, Ayivu East and Central Division — and the rest of the money is dedicated to administrative works.

The council has been operating without a roads committee and a lot of funds were mismanaged as a result.

This year, the committee was constituted and chaired by Ayivu East Member of Parliament, Geoffrey Feta.

To that effect, the committee decided to ring-fence the funds by ensuring that technical staffs draw a work plan and approved it by the roads committee for implementation.

When contacted on the phone on May 27, 2023, Feta mentioned that there has been a delay in road maintenance because the committee had to ring-fence the funds to ensure proper procedures were followed for quality assurance work to avoid mistakes in previous years.

“When the committee approved the plan, we had to give the technical team time to do an assessment on the roads we earmarked to be worked on,” Feta explained.

Ayivu MP Geofrey Feta doubles as Arua City roads committee chairperson. Photo by Prossy Nankanja

The road committee also approved 32 roads to be worked on in the central division, 13 in Ayivu East, and 11 roads in Ayivu West.

Lack of road equipment

The quality of roads deteriorated because of a lack of road equipment to work on the roads.

It is said that Arua City has not received any road equipment since it became a city as assets have not been shared with the mother Arua district.

However, the council opted to hire equipment to undertake road works in the city from other neighbouring districts.

“Arua district has given us a motor grader and at a later time, they will be adding another one, but also we have gone into hiring to ensure we deploy the equipment in all the three constituencies so that the activities move fast,” Arua city town clerk Paul Batanda said.

What residents say

However, the residents in Arua City doubt the development saying the city authority is just covering up since the financial year is ending.

Martha Ayikoru, a resident of Driwala parish in Ayivu division, said: “You can’t tell me that within a short period of time, you will be in a position to work on all roads in the city. These people are just playing with our minds. They are only looking for accountability”. 

Juma Lemeriga, a resident of Tanganyika ward in Central division, said: “The city authority needs to treat the state of roads as an emergency”.