Kagina reassures on Katosi road, Nile bridge

Jinja. The Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) executive director, Ms Allen Kagina, has said the construction of the Mukono-Katosi road and the new Jinja bridge on River Nile will be completed on time.
During a tour of the multi-billion projects on Monday, Ms Kagina said they will be delivered in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
She started her tour with the controversial 74km Mukono-Kyetume-Katosi-Nyenga road, where works on several sections have stalled again as a result of delayed compensation of project affected persons (PAPs) in the project right of way.
“There is a lot of fraud in land issues, which we are trying to sort by ensuring each claimant has a Tax Identification Number (TIN) so we can know who government is paying and can always follow up on them,” Ms Kagina said.
In November last year, residents objected to the issuance of TIN numbers, fearing that Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) will tax their money.
Ms Kagina, also former commissioner general of the tax body, said they will work together with URA to ensure residents are accorded TINs and their taxation concerns looked into.
According to UNRA, so far 4,466 PAPs have been valued and Shs10 billion has been paid out to 2,585 people. The Ministry of Finance has released another Shs19b to facilitate compensations, a process awaiting until all PAPs have TINs.

The Jinja bride
The UNRA boss also toured the construction of the Shs390b new 525m-long Nile bridge; where construction of “superstructure” is ongoing. The new bridge will complement the old one constructed in the 1960s.The bridge is contracted to two Japanese construction firms, Zenitaka-Hundai, but has been recently dogged by rows over procurement with the IGG is looking into.