By Our Reporter
Dramatic scenes have rocked Mbarara District Council this afternoon after furious councillors banged tables demanding accountability for the Ugx1billion road funds that was released by the Local Gov’t months back.
Gov’t released the Ugx1b to enhance road infrastructure across the nation. These funds were allocated for the maintenance of roads in every district and this was in addition to the funds provided through the Road Fund.
Mbarara councillors, however, say that when this fund landed on the district accounts instead of utilizing it on roads, was instead diverted into the pockets of some few selfish district bosses.
In their protest, the councillors accused the district secretary of works who doubles as the LCV Chairman Mr Tabaro Didas for allegedly conniving with the engineers to misappropriate the funds and ballooning the road construction costs.
”These people are so shameless, now when they realized that it was hard for them to steal the funds without us knowing, they decided to use a tactic of ballooning the costs. They tell you that we have so far spent over Ugx1b but in reality, when you go on the ground, you realize the value of the work that has been done is less than Ugx500m. So where has the other huge chunk of money gone?” wondered Moses Kabireho Zasyora district councillor for Bwizibwera Rutoma T/Council.
He warned that as councillors they won’t stay silent as the top district leaders are busy chopping taxpayers money.
”We’ve shown our dissatisfaction over what is happening in Mbarara, Mr Didas should be warned that we are not going to be hoodwinked, we were sent into this council by people who expect good services out of us, this nonsense of stealing taxpayers’ money will not be tolerated, in fact, he should table the accountability for these funds or we escalate matters to the IGG, State House Anti Corruption Unit and other concerned agencies,” added a furious Zasyora.
In the same council, Tukamushaba Junior youth representative at the Council revealed that to their surprise for example, Bwizibwera-Mabira-Kitokye-Rweshanku road of 13kms was awarded Ugx102m adding that in actual sense a km can’t go beyond Ugx2m meaning at least it would have costed around Ugx26m.
”Meanwhile, on top of this huge swindling of money, the above-mentioned road is already full of potholes. You can go in the villages and ask the wanainchi, they will tell you how they are suffering on this road whose money came but landed in the wrong hands of greedy top district leaders,” fumed Tukamushaba.
In response to the above, Tabaro told the councillors that he knows nothing about these accusations since he is not the district engineer, something that saw councillors marching out of the council in protest of what they called the unacceptable arrogance of their district leader.
