Kampala Capital City Authority Technical staffs connive with central government officials to swindle tax payers’ money via obscenely inflated cost of civil works in the city.
This was revealed by the Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago in a press conference he convened at his office on January 4, 2023 were he verbertely reap a report he is going to present to parliament seeking its intervention to save tax payers money.
Lukwago said that such inflated cost of civil works have greatly hampered the turmarcing, lighting and paving of roads in the capital city making the city dwellers to suffer the consequences.
He said that he has made an alarm to the IGG asking her office to investigate that matter but up to nothing taken place as far as investigation on such corruption tendencies are concerned and this has prompted him to seek an intervention of parliament.
In the document which dailystarnewsug.com has got a copy, Lukwago alleges that for instance Lukuli Road in Makindye division which is 7.71 km cost Ugx 70.5 billion, an average of 10 billion per km and Kulambiro/Najera link, Nakawa-Ntinda Road in Nakawa and Acacia Avenue all totalling to 9.77km cost Ugx 90.4 billion yet averagely a kilometre would cost between Ugx 2.5 – 3.5 billion.
The costs are inflated further this financial year were KCCA has earmarked to construct 31 roads constituting 69 km, using funds from African Development Bank(ADB) at a cost of US $ 287 million and this translates to each kilometre costing a whopping Ugx 14.4b.
The Lord Mayor Lukwago also said he raised this with the ADB and IGG and this has inevitably caused a delay in the commencement of civil works on the listed KCCA road.
Despite the rampant miss appropriation of tax payers` funds since the inception of KCCA a decade ago, no single official has ever been arrest and prosecuted on the accounts of abuse of office, embezzlement or on corruption related cases.
Neither the Executive director of KCCA nor the institutions public relations director was available for a comment despite being reached on their known communication lines.
By George Bukenya
For a comment call 0770845082/ 0756749901 of email, bgbukenya@gmail.com