When foreign companies get contracts to do certain jobs in Uganda and indeed many African countries, there are mixed feelings among many local people. They always ask the question, why can’t we do it ourselves. Don’t we have local companies that can do this? Of course when these international companies undertake such contracts, they repatriate profits from the job and these profits must come from local earnings. If the profits were being taken by a local company, the money would remain in the country. For countries that have something to export like oil for instance, such contracts are not a big problem to the economy but they are for small economies that have very little to export. Road construction is one area where international companies secure such contracts. They bring in engineers and management skills. It is common on our roads to find one “mzungu” on a hot day as the local fellows sweat out on the road. Finally these roads come out well with good quality. This is true for the majority of them. It is also true that once in a while, these roads may come out with poor quality. Guess what the problem is? Usually lack of supervision. Who supervises? Our local engineers. On the Jinja Kampala road, there were some repairs done some time back with an intention of removing sharp bents from the road. The areas that were repaired include Namagunga area, Nagojje. Until recently, these areas that were repaired became the worst spots on the roads. These were done by some local contractor.
As I write now, Sterling is doing some major repairs on the road and the difference is very visible. The road construction challenge can be replicated in many other areas of economic activity. What is the problem there? We have excellent engineers, excellent managers but we simply do not measure up to the job. It is not surprising that most of the foreign owned companies have foreigners as top executives like Stanbic, Barclays Bank, Hima Factory but even our local owned companies owned by Africans, we usually employ a foreigner in one of the top jobs. The Indian community in Uganda some of whom are identified as Ugandans take Sudhir, the Madhavani Group, Karim among others, they bring Indian experts to manage these organisations. We in the educational institutions are churning out educated people but they do not appear good enough to work in these companies. What is the challenge? Trust? Attention to detail? Work culture? Recently a road in Bugolobi, Bazalabusa road which links Luthuli Avenue with Mbuya road on the side of Bugolobi flats, was repaired. I am not sure what the cost was. The repair included removal of the old tarmac which according to me was excellent and replacing it with a new surface. The process of doing so was very painful because it took some long time to complete. The road maybe approximately half a kilometer. After it was resealed, most likely with the one layer, many of us who use it, waited for the final resealing but it never happened.
This road had developed some potholes indeed one of them was so huge. I remember seeing a small car getting stuck in a pothole and the pothole grew bigger day by day. What was required was patching the potholes not resealing the holes. Unfortunately after this resealing, the rains came. They caused the damage on the resealed road which we are still waiting for the relevant authorities to address. But given our culture of lack of maintenance, I guess this road will be left to wear away until when we borrow money to resurface it. If we borrowed money to do this job, we have a major challenge in our hands. i imagine this is a city authority road and I hope that my friend Jennifer hears about this
No comments:
Post a Comment