When Mr. Ntemela Akange, a senior accountant with KCCA looked down through his office window, he initially thought that a flash mob was dancing and spinning open umbrellas outside the KCCA headquarters on Monday afternoon. But on taking a closer look at the group, he found faces familiar to him, which is when his personal secretary pointed out that they were KCCA road contractors who maintain city roads.
Amazed by the vigor with which many of the pot bellied, half bald, obese multi-national contractors were dancing exactly the way peacocks are spotted after the first rains, our reporter went down to dig out more about what was going on.
“I had almost finalized a land deal and had made a 60% down-payment in cash to a friend in Ministry of Lands to help me forge a land title for a road reserve in Nakawa. I was supposed to pay the rest in 3 months. My wife and children were against me buying the land that cost a bomb, and we hardly had any cash reserves to pay further. But my Lands Ministry friend assured me that the deal was legit and no one in government will even touch me. Besides, I was also confident that Clock Tower area, on which I carried out maintenance work at the zebra crossing just a week ago, would flood at any slightest drizzle. I started getting sleepless nights when the Meteorological department said there wouldn’t be rain in the near future. But when I woke up today and found that it was raining, I was happy and confident that I would make up for the land deal,” Rajesh Kavi explained to UCN why he couldn’t stop himself from dancing.
Narrating his side of happiness, another contractor Zimway Zaddock said, “After UBC weather department finally predicted right about rain this week, I dusted all my equipment ready for work. Today I took an aerial survey using my son’s chopper around downtown Kampala and much as I saw a lot of work for me to do, I was not happy with some huge chunks of tarmac I saw on some roads because driving on them can be hell. I wonder which fool of a contractor worked on those roads. KCCA should suspend them.”
Turyagenda Harvey, another contractor from Westlands Engineering intermittently singing “…Tekka Sentte wolabaaa, kubanga agayaaye ngawula…” was heard saying, “Ugandans can love us, they can hate us. But they cannot ignore us. With God’s grace, if the rains continue for another 3-4 hours, the city will come to a virtual halt and then we will be given the mammoth task of draining the water by KCCA. All I can see is me seated in my air-conditioned SUV as I supervise my ill-paid workers cover up potholes and clear the blocked drainage system on Kampala road while I shop online for a car for my corrupt KCCA friend who helps me get such juicy tenders.”
When UCN sought a comment from officials at KCCA about the contractors, we found them locked in an impromptu budget re-allocation meeting while others were found laughing and forwarding jokes on potholes and floods in the city, most of them to the dancing road contractors downstairs.
