By Steven Enatu
SOROTI CITY
The General Purpose Committee of Soroti city council has resolved to send the city engineer, Robert Kairu on forced leave to give room for investigations over alleged shoddy works and mismanagement of Uganda Road Funds (URF) money.
This was resolved yesterday, 22nd March, 2023 during an interface with the works department as the committee headed by John Junior Okwii who doubles at the city youth council scrutinizes the reports from different heads of department at the city for the current financial year 2022/2023.
Okwii said URF meant to do road works in the city planned at one billion with releases coming on quarterly basis does not commensurate with the actual work on ground.
Okwiii says as a council, they want the office of the Inspectorate of Government, Resident City Commissioner and police CID department to institute investigations into the alleged mismanagement of URF in Soroti city. This they say can only happen when he has stepped aside.
The committee also cited shoddy works in the 8meters Ajena road that was allocated 800million under transitional grants but looks incomplete without stone pitch.
“When you look at what has been released and what work has been done, you find that there is a lot of inconsistency. Some roads in Soroti city are planned with scope of work including pegging and stone pitching but you find the road is left incomplete. The Kilometer distances and radius is inconsistent,” he noted.
Okwii alleges that officials in the works department hide money in the name of fuel and later they connive then go and pick the money.
“This money is all under the road fund which also has a budget line for monitoring and supervision but my committee has never gone on ground, we are given excuses that there is no money,” he claims.
Meanwhile, Simon Peter Okiring, the councilor representing Soroti City East in the council also cited imbalance in service delivery saying more roads are done in Soroti City West and when it comes to Soroti City East, they say equipment is broken.
While presenting the department report, Engineer Oranit on behalf of the city Engineer noted that the city lacked equipment since its own broke down.
He said an attempt was made to request the Soroti district local government grader which was successful but just shortly after, the city had repaired the grader and used it for one week, the district authority ordered it back before they would commence with road works in Soroti city.
