In a move aimed at ensuring that there is minimal back drop of growing bad roads especially upcountry, the Ministry of Works and Transport is conducting trainings and knowledge sharing workshops for both ministry and local authorities’ engineers.
The trainings that have been conducted from October to November at Imperial Royale Hotel, Kampala wereaimed at strengthening Road and Bridge Management Capacity that is funded by African Development Bank.
The training attracted over 50 engineers spearheaded by Mountain Elgon Labour Based Training Centre – the training wing of Ministry of Works and Transport.
According to Eng. Hassan Ssentamu, Principal Mountain Elgon Labour Based Training Centre, this short course provides an introduction to road asset management and the design and construction of low – cost bridge structures.
“It starts with an overview of the core principles in asset management and low-cost bridge structures and will cover the appropriate level data requirements, data collection techniques, analytical approaches and interpretation of results or outcomes,” said Eng. Ssentamu.
Eng. David Luyimbazi, the CEO Basic Group Uganda, who was a key facilitator at the training noted that ‘because the biggest challenge to the transport infrastructure sector is financing, prudent utilization of the available resources is key to achieving better roads.
“The major issue affecting the roads sector is financing. Whenever you can’t meet both maintenance and development needs, then you are providing substandard interventions which can’t last the life time that was expected.
For every dollar held back for maintaining roads, road users pay about 3.5 dollars. If we don’t pay for what is required to keep roads in good conditions, road users than pay in terms of damage to vehicles, congestion and longer travel time,” Luyimbazi added.
The engineers that attended this training were selected from about 20 districts of Uganda. They were trained on how to use limited budgets to deliver high quality roads and bridges. One way of achieving this, according to roads experts is through the use of local content raw material such as concrete and cement, not the expensive and imported steel.
“I am so glad that Eng David Luyimbazi has been able to organize a team with a lot of local content. They have put together this very important training targeting ministry of works engineers and district engineers.” – Commissioner for Roads and Bridges at Ministry of Works said.
“I wish to thank government of Uganda and Ministry of Works and Transport for embracing capacity building. Ordinarily, such a course of this nature would be conducted in Birmingham – UK.” said Eng. Steven Kitonsa – Commissioner for Roads and Bridges at Ministry of Works.
By Drake Nyamugabwa
