Ugandans eager to establish what has occasioned the delay in completion of the 23.7km Busega-Mpigi Expressway will have to wait for an undefined period after the Works and Transport line committee in Parliament was blocked from probing the matter.
The four-lane dual-carriage project, which was anticipated to slash traffic transition time from two hours to about 40 minutes upon completion, attracted the attention of lawmakers on the Physical Infrastructure Committee. This was after it emerged that the project had stalled for years, failing to beat the original deadline.
The committee chaired by the Mbarara City South legislator Mwine Mpaka has been probing the goings-on in the project since last month. It was, however, blocked from unearthing the exact causes of delays, as well as other factors that escalated the original project cost from Shs547.54 billion to Shs1.308 trillion.
‘According to the Auditor General’s report, we discovered that 28 roads had been delayed, and 13 roads had been condoned by the contractors. We are trying to establish what the root causes are, and we have sampled a few, specifically Mpigi, to determine what the actual challenges are on these roads,’ Mr Mpaka said.
‘Unfortunately, we were advised to consult the Speaker because we know other agencies are similarly investigating, and the Speaker requested that we withdraw from the investigation regarding the roads because Security [agencies] is already investigating and concentrating on other issues,’ he added.
An unmitigated disaster?
A deep dive into key documents about the road project put before the committee shows that the project cost ballooned by 139.1 percent to Shs1.308 trillion.
Preliminary analysis that the committee has done shows that the Shs1.308 trillion cost of the 23.7km stretch was occasioned by inflation, scope expansion and alignment changes periodically done since the works commenced. Price escalation is also allegedly blamed on late approval of affected changes.
Provisional scrutiny on the project contract details done by the House committee condensed the entire causal process of cost variation to a minimum of six major stages.
Specifically, the sticky issues were found to be in project design weakness, scope expansion and premature procurement processes. All these contributed to pushing the project cost to Shs1.308 trillion following years of alterations on project scope.
Legislators on the parliamentary committee also discovered that a series of decision failures and control bypasses removed competition, shifted the risks that emerged in the process and piled them on the government.
A litany of mistakes
A specific zoom into the design weaknesses shows that the initial design was delivered with major omissions and deficiencies. For instance, the initial design had incomplete interchanges, no toll facilities, no link roads and carried an unsafe Mpigi terminus, among others.
The same documents sourced by the House committee show that despite these glaring gaps, the design was accepted.
Months later, the scope was expanded. In so doing, financing restructuring saw several alterations made. For instance, the Kibuye-Busega stretch was slashed off, and four new interchanges were added.
In this, the utility works expanded, the scope increased, but the funding was not aligned at the time. Consequently, this triggered a premature procurement process.
Works procurement, for one, was initiated before a revised project design was completed and approved.
In his submissions made to the committee a fortnight ago, the Minister for Works and Transport, Mr Fred Byabakama, termed the anomaly as a treasonous act, not least because hitting the pause button on the project will hit the taxpayer where it hurts most.
‘This is another form of treason. How can you commit government without the right of way? For instance, the Busega-Mpigi Expressway, some of them [Ministry of Works officials involved in the matter] will tell you there is no problem there. If at all you give them a chance, they will tell you that there is no problem, but in actual sense there is a problem,’ Minister Byabakama said.
In a further displeasing revelation, the Works Minister said the project cost, if implemented in the current form, will siphon a minimum of Shs2 trillion from the National Treasury.
‘A project which was supposed to cost Shs547 billion, because of a change in alignment, it goes to Shs1.3 trillion, and eventually that money is not more than Shs700 billion, which [means that the entire project cost] will go to Shs2 trillion if the road is to be finished,’ Minister Byamukama said.
‘It is quite surprising, but we don’t feel shy to tell you because you are our supervisors and you are the ones who give us money [approve the ministry’s budget],’ he added.
202 pending questions
Days before the investigations were halted, the committee had scheduled to interface with at least 10 parties.
The said parties are said to have been directly and indirectly involved in the processes that led to escalation of the project cost from Shs547 billion to Shs1.3 trillion.
The committee had assembled a total of 202 questions through which the exact triggers of the escalation would be unearthed.
The lined-up of the parties include the Ministry of Finance top officials, the defunct Uganda National Roads Authority (Unra)’s top brass and former board, and Unra legal department.
Others are: project managers, the African Development Bank, the design consultant, supervision consultants and the quantity surveyors. Also in the ‘firing line’ were officials from the Office of the Solicitor General who were involved in the project and the procurement and disposal unit.
‘So as per now, our rules of engagement are to withdraw from that investigation. But the reason as to why we think there are so many people involved and we have 202 questions which we believe should have been answered to guide us in who exactly is culpable,’ Mr Mpaka told the Weekend Monitor.
He added: ‘The committee of physical infrastructure will not be producing a report regarding the Mpigi Expressway unless our terms of reference change or unless the House decides that we should also investigate, but as of now, the Speaker advised us to withdraw.’
About the project
The Busega-Mpigi Expressway commenced in May 2020, but has run into several speed bumps. These include land acquisition disputes, funding constraints as well as scope alterations.
An expansionist drive that consequently led to inclusion of bridges, toll plaza, and interchanges has not helped matters. In early November 2023, Deputy Speaker of Parliament Thomas, together with the then Executive Director of the Uganda National Roads Authority (Unra), Ms Allen Kagina, made on-site inspections to check on actual progress of the construction works on the project.
Minutes after the inspection, Mr Tayebwa expressed his displeasure over the stalled works and promised to jointly work with other concerned entities to have the matter expeditiously resolved in order to accelerate construction works.
In fact, the government delegation that visited the site pledged that it would take another 48 months to deliver the Busega-Mpigi expressway. Works on the said project, however, continued to stall.
Late last year, another pound 217 million (approximately Shs909 billion) was paid by the African Development Bank to facilitate completion works of the same project. In effect, the government, through the senior communications officer at the Ministry of Works and Transport, disclosed that the new project had jumped to Shs1.3 trillion.
China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) and the China Railway 19th Bureau Group Company Limited, contractors on the project, say it will be handed over for utilisation in 2030.