Neglected Safety: The Killer on Our Roads

 By Michael Aboneka Jr

If you have not been to Kampala and are planning a trip, please don’t come, for your own good. Kampala is allergic to rain, a few showers and the roads are gone. We have lost over 10 lives due to the splash rains and continue to lose 13 per day and 4,745 lives per year in road carnage. Much as there are other factors, the blame has heavily and unfairly been placed on the motorists and road users. The roads are poorly designed, with no lights or pedestrian walkways or road shoulders to support emergencies. We should not be having scenarios of crashes into stationary vehicles, later on concrete barriers. We have an extremely unprofessional workmanship for roads in Uganda. The Northern bypass is a perpetual road construction site and recently the Munyonyo expressway which has claimed lives. There is no proper road signage and lights to guide motorists and users of the new developments on the road and it seems no one cares. We had to cry and file a legal suit to have some light on the Kampala Entebbe Expressway to which the government in their defence claimed they did not have money and therefore motorists should use their headlights for road safety. We have for years called upon KCCA to sort the darkness on Ntinda II road and others but all in vain as they seem to wait for another fatality and send their condolences. There is a spot on the Kalagi- Kayunga road, where a road sign for the forest police is mounted right in the middle of the road in a corner at Kasawo without reflectors, even when we have raised this issue severally to the concerned, it still persists. None of the Railway crossings have automatic barriers that would cut off the traffic to pave way for the train but somehow we expect everyone to be able to see the train which is incomprehensible.

We cannot continue to lose lives over negligent acts. We cannot pay taxes and receive shoddy or no services at all! The Ministry of works, KCCA and all agencies bear the responsibility under the Roads Act and other legal instruments and must be held liable for each life we lose on the roads under the above circumstances as it is their sole responsibility to ensure the roads are safe under the Roads Act.

 

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