In the game of blaming and curative over preventive, Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago is pointing to encroachment of major drainage channels by some city tycoons and failure by the government to compensate people to give way for the construction of drainage channels as the cause of chronic deadly city floods.
Addressing the media in Kampala, Mr. Lukwago identified that year in year out, the issue of financing the Kampala Drainage Master Plan (KDMP) has been clustered amongst the unfunded priorities, and this means the government has not considered the issue of fixing drainages in Kampala as one of the key priorities.
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“In the coming financial year, our budget is Shs827b, but what is there for drainage is Shs3.2b for maintenance of 67.7 kilometers of primary and major secondary drainages,” he began.
The Lord Mayor added that in the entire budget of Shs827bn, there is no single coin allocated towards the construction of drainage channels in Kampala.
He added that according to KCCA’s KDMP, the authority needs Shs805,766,720,000 ($220m) to improve both its primary and secondary drainage channels.
“Over a ten-year’ period, KCCA needs annually equivalent to Shs83.6b to fully implement KDMP and between Shs50 and 60b annually to maintain its roads and drainage infrastructure effectively,” he said.
He added that in the financial year 2024/2025, 67.7 km of drainage were planned to be desilted at a cost of Shs3,249,024,000; however, calls for orders worth Shs2,615,132,000 were prepared for the emergency works in Kitezi landfill following the landslide.
“As a result of the deficit in funding, much of the planned work for the financial year cannot be implemented,” he oozed.
Mr. Lukwago said that the existing Kampala drainage inventory indicates that we have a drainage system comprised of 86.3 kilometers of primary drainage channels and 203.2 kilometers of secondary channels and several tertiary and community drains.
“In 2016, we developed the Kampala drainage master plan (KDMP) following the consultancy that was given to us by experts, and they identified eight major drainage channels from amongst the primary channels,” he said.
He added that the major channels include Nakivubo, Lubigi, Nalukolongo, Kansanga, Mayanja, Kinawataka, Nalubaga, and Walufumbe, which needed to be fixed urgently if we were to resolve the growing problem of floods in Kampala.
“They indicated that we needed a sum of Shs 805,766,720,000 (220m$) to deal with all the primary drainage channels,” he said.
“It’s unfortunate that even now Lugibi is not yet complete; there is a stretch of 900 kilometers that is yet to be constructed. Lugibi costs Shs 62b, while Nakamiro costs 20b.”
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