Kadaga asks Prime Minister to fast-track Kampala-Jinja Expressway

The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, has implored the Prime Minister, Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, to push harder in urging government to construct the Kampala-Jinja Expressway.
The expressway, a strategic corridor which serves as a trade link to the sea for land-linked countries of Uganda, Rwanda and DR Congo, was scheduled to commence in 2015 as per an earlier communication from the Uganda National Roads Authority.
Kadaga, in a meeting between Busoga Consortium and the Prime Minister at Parliament on Friday, 21 February 2020 noted that it was urgent for government to come to the aid of users of Kampala-Jinja Road saying the current traffic jam poses ‘economic imprisonment’.
“Rt Hon. Prime Minister, it takes five hours to travel from Kampala to Jinja, think about the amount of time we waste, what sort of life is that?” asked Kadaga adding that “the Jinja- Kampala high way is the main artery, it’s the road that takes everybody to the other parts of the country, so relive us of that economic imprisonment we are in.”

Rugunda retorted that the Kampala-Jinja Expressway has been a contentious matter on the Cabinet’s agenda for a while and that it was already among the items of the Cabinet meeting scheduled for Monday, 24 February 2020.
“It is a subject matter that is still under discussion to ensure proper implementation, all of us do realise that the Jinja-Kampala Road congestion is clearly a bottleneck and a very costly one, because it abstracts rapid economic transactions and increases the cost of doing business in the country,” Rugunda said.
The Prime Minister was also urged to follow up a presidential pledge to provide incubators to Busoga farmers as a way of creating market for sugar cane which Kadaga said was poor.  “Farmers cannot sell sugarcane in the country or abroad. Now to sell sugar cane you must go to an Indian and he decides how much you can sell,” said Kadaga, also patron of the Busoga Consortium.
Rugunda pledged that a committee would be formed comprising of officials from Office of the Prime Minister and Busoga Consortium to follow up critical issues crippling development in Busoga region.