Housing Ministry Queried For for Installing Poor quality Traffic Lights

Housing Ministry Queried For for Installing Poor quality Traffic Lights

Officials of from the Ministry of Lands Housing and Urban Development in charge of the Uganda Support Municipal Infrastructure Development Program (USMID) have been queried by the Local government Public Accounts committee of parliament for installing poor quality traffic lights in 14 municipalities that have so far broken down.

The Committee has also questioned them for inflating the unit cost of roads constructed under the 360 million US dollar program.

While assessing the performance of the project today, members of the Local government Public Accounts committee have exposed a lot of shoddy works in the project pointing at poor quality solar street lights which were installed in various municipalities.

After traversing the country while monitoring the implementation of the project, the chairperson of the Local Government Public Accounts Committee Martin Ojara Mapenduuzi noted that 60 percent of solar street lights installed in 14 municipalities have broken down in a short time.

The committee also grilled officials from the ministry of lands who implemented this project for inflating the unit cost of roads constructed under this project compared to UNRA roads.

A total of 110 urban roads totaling to 78.4km have been constructed in 13 Municipalities.

The USMID implementers defended the inflation and variation in the unit cost of the urban roads saying they are implementing a modern concept of urban roads which require covered line drains, pedestrian walkways, Solar street lights, street trash cans and signalized traffic lights

The committee gave them one week to adduce documentary evidence against queries raised against USMID implementation.

They are accused of inflating the unit cost of roads constructed Most street lights set up under the project have already broken down.