Having been prevailed upon by the Chinese funders, President Museveni has had no option but to agree to have a ceremony of sorts to demonstrate that the under 55kms Entebbe Express Highway is almost completed. We are reliably informed that the contractor CCCC recently contacted Beijing and flew into the country a high powered delegation from China which had audience with the President at Entebbe State House. During the meeting, the Chinese told the President they had managed to convince the Chinese government to deploy the 4th most powerful person in the Chinese government to travel to Uganda and attend the commissioning of the road project in the next few weeks. On being consulted, the UNRA ED Allen Kagina insisted this was improper because the road wasn’t ready for that and wouldn’t be so even in the remaining few weeks to the date the Chinese/CCCC have chosen to bring their big man. Kagina, who still has some two years remaining to finish her first contract as ED, can be very assertive sometimes especially when she has compelling reasons to show she is right. She reportedly objected to this rushing of the road project but reluctantly gave up after the President indicated to her the Chinese would feel bad if their planned visit is put off simply because one or two things haven’t yet been accomplished by the contractor CCCC.
This news website has separately learnt that, whereas they clearly know the project won’t be ready for commissioning on the date they are proposing, the CCCC bosses are pushing for it because they want to quickly include in their profile the Entebbe Express Highway as one of their latest mega projects in the region. “It’s all business and as we talk, they must be scheming to bid for a certain big project somewhere in the region and they badly want to add this project and the photos of their visiting big man in their updated business profile,” said a concerned GoU top official who didn’t want to be quoted. For comments, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755!
