By Our Reporters
Recent media reports attributed to UNRA management showed the billions of shillings the new management, under Allen Kagina, had saved by doing most of the roads designing and supervision work using the Authority’s in-house employees, something that didn’t go down well with the consulting engineers (UACE members) operating in the private sector and have always lived off UNRA jobs. This news website recently interacted with Kagina who revealed she was working with Eng Micheal Odongo, the Chairman of Engineers Registration Board, to have regular meetings with the consulting engineers in the private sector to hammer out a consensus on how the two parties can work together more closely.
Kagina indicated to us that, whereas she is willing to listen to the private consulting engineers’ grievances and even give some concessions, there is one area where she won’t be having any discussions-and that is to do with contracting private consultants to handle compensation of project affected persons (PAPs) for the areas where major road works pass. She said in the past, PAPs’ compensation is one area UNRA was losing colossal sums of money in distorted property valuation reports.
In a letter dated 18th June 2018, Eng Alex Turihohabwe who is the chairman for Uganda Association of Consulting Engineers (UACE) furiously makes the group’s grievances formally known to the UNRA ED Allen Kagina, Parliament, Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Works. The letter, which was duly received by UNRA headquarters and acknowledged as such, is addressed to UNRA Board Chairman Fred Omach. Turihohabwe claims that Kagina’s insistence of using UNRA internal staff to do much of the work (also known as force account) is contrary to the President’s policy of private sector participation in the country’s economic development processes (for comments, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755). We hereby reproduce Eng Turihohabwe’s full letter:
VERBATTIM:
