
MOROTO — The road engineers attached to Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) are toiling day and night sealing potholes along the Moroto-Kenya road in a bid to beat the deadline of a scheduled Presidential visit.
This is in preparations for the visit of two heads of state President Museveni and his counterpart Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta slated to take place in Moroto district.
President Museveni and Uhuru Kenyatta will be in Moroto on Thursday, September 12 to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the Turkana-Karamoja border development.
They are expected to drive through a neglected road under UNRA’s management to the borderpoint of Turkana and Karamoja.
The 27-Kilometer road stretches from Moroto to Lokiriama and it had been in a bad state until on Tuesday when UNRA sent a team to clear and cover up all the potholes along the road.
This has attracted attention from the general public who are wondering why UNRA team had neglected the road but now grade it after learning that President Museveni and his counterpart will drive along the stretch.
“These people have been working on this road from Tuesday morning up to Wednesday morning they never went to sleep and we are wandering where they have all that time when the road got spoiled,” said Grace Kolibe a concerned resident.
Peter Lokol another concerned resident told PML Daily on Wednesday, September 11, 2019 that they were wondering where UNRA got the money that enabled them to spruce the road.
“We have been asking UNRA when they will grade the road but they tell us there was no money even last week we asked but now we are surprised that six graders are working on the road,”he noted.
According to Mr. Lokol it shouldn’t be a mentality that projects in Karamoja can be only worked on properly whenever President Museveni visits Karamoja.
Mr. Mark Saali the UNRA Public Relations Officer when contacted said he was not aware that their engineers were working on the road even at night describing it as strange.
“Let me first find out from our managers on the ground then will get back to you as soon as I speak to them,” he asserted.