Underfunding cripples KCCA manifesto plans

The State minister for Kampala and Metropolitan Affairs, Mr Kabuye Kyofatogabye, has decried underfunding and budget cuts in Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), saying it has crippled the implementation of key manifesto projects.
While presenting the key highlights of the implementation of KCCA manifesto pledges in Kampala yesterday, Mr Kyofatogabye said whereas KCCA had a detailed list of pledges to the city dwellers in the 2021 to 2026 NRM manifesto, they are being hampered by limited resources.
“KCCA’s major challenge is the inadequate funding of the key infrastructure and city maintenance programmes. Our (KCCA) pledges to the people of Kampala are clear, but they all need resources for implementation,” Mr Kyofatogabye said.
According to the 2021-2026 NRM manifesto, KCCA was assigned at least eight roles towards the realisation of the government pledges to the people.
The roles include solving traffic and congestion in the city, rehabilitation of the existing paved roads, improving drainage systems in the five divisions of the city, and building markets.

Others are boosting revenue collection, installation of street lights on the city roads, constructing of four street bridges, and reconfiguring several junctions in the city.
However, with the exception of the revenue collection where the authority surpassed its revenue target by Shs2b when they collected close to Shs79b in the last nine months, against the targeted Shs77b, KCCA has not performed effectively towards achieving the other manifesto targets.
The KCCA Executive Director, Ms Dorothy Kisaka, said the authority has been in a spotlight for the worsening state of roads yet the technical team cannot do much without resources.
Ms Kisaka reiterated that the creation of the City Roads Committee will be key in ensuring proper maintenance of roads.

“The alarm was only about the poor state of roads in the city, not considering the available resources for maintenance. KCCA is more concerned about this City, but we only implement it depending on the available resource envelope,” Ms Kisaka said.
Last month, Ms Kisaka revealed that KCCA needs at least Shs100b against the current budget of Shs26b to repair several roads in the country’s capital that are in a sorry state.
She further expressed her concern about the dead end of KCCA meetings with relevant authorities such as the Ministry of Finance, and the committees of Parliament for Infrastructure and Presidential Affairs, which have not recommended any budget enhancement irrespective of the ‘dead’ state of the city roads
Other challenges raised by Ms Kisaka are congestion in the city, vandalism of public property, and old and dilapidated infrastructure such as schools and health facilities which require money for maintenance.