Finish the Kabale–Bunyonyi Road Before Kigyezi Pays the Price

When our Member of Parliament for Ndorwa County West, the Hon. Eliab Naturinda Mporera, rose in Parliament on July 7, 2026, he was not merely reporting a broken road in a distant corner of the country. He was holding up a mirror to a national weakness. I agree with every word he spoke, and I write today to carry his message to a wider audience, and above all, to His Excellency President Yoweri Museveni.

The facts are plain, and they are painful. In June 2025, Government commissioned the upgrading of the Kabaare–Bunyonyi Road, a stretch of only 15.1 kilometres, together with the 18.1-kilometre Kisoro–Mugahinga road. The two were part of a package worth about 30 million US dollars (112 billion shillings), co-funded by the African Development Bank and our own Government through the Uganda National Roads Authority. For the people of Kigyezi, this was never just tarmac. It was a promise of more tourists, safer travel, cheaper transport, and a future in which our children would not have to leave home to find opportunity.

That promise now lies abandoned in the dust. The contractor, Samcrete Egypt Engineers and Contractors, has reportedly packed up, pulled its heavy machinery off the site, and stopped work altogether. What remains is worse than what we started with: loose earth, choking dust, open drainage trenches, and a surface that punishes every vehicle and every traveller who dares to use it. I know of what I speak. I drove along that road multiple times early this year.

Behind this abandonment sits a quarrel that ordinary people did not create and should not have to suffer for. The project consultant, Aarvee Associates, issued a fresh notice on June 6, 2026, telling the contractor that the conditions for starting work had been met and that construction should begin on June 8. The contractor replied on June 10, rejecting the notice and insisting that important conditions were still unmet, among them proper access to a continuous stretch of the site, gaps in land acquisition, and questions about the environmental approval.

The contract itself was signed back in September 2023. The advance payment was confirmed in March 2025. A Dispute Board was even set up in July 2024 for exactly this kind of disagreement. And yet, here we are, with the contractor's suspension of work, declared on April 30, 2026, still standing, and the road going nowhere. While the lawyers and engineers exchange letters, Kigyezi bleeds.

Consider tourism. Lake Bunyonyi is one of the most beautiful places in all of Uganda, and one of the surest sources of livelihood for our region. Hotels, lodges, boat operators, tour guides, food suppliers, and thousands of young people depend on visitors reaching that lake. When the road becomes a nightmare, the bookings are cancelled, the visitors stay away, and the money dries up. Families lose income, and Government itself loses the taxes and licence fees that tourism brings. We speak grandly of growing our economy from sixty billion dollars to five hundred billion dollars. How will we ever get there if we allow the very projects meant to power that growth to be quietly strangled?

Consider our farmers. Kigyezi feeds much of this country with Irish potatoes, vegetables, and livestock. Our lake-region people rely on the Kabaare–Bunyonyi corridor to move their produce to town and beyond. With the works stalled, transport now costs more, journeys take longer, vehicles break down, and perishable food rots before it reaches the market. In a region where most households live by the hoe, this is not an inconvenience. It is a direct blow to food on the table and money in the pocket.

Consider the health of our people and the health of the lake. The exposed road throws up clouds of dust that settle on homes, schools, and shops along the route. Our children, our elders, and anyone with a weak chest breathe it in day after day. When the rains come, the loose soil is washed into the waterways, threatening to silt and poison a fragile ecosystem that took nature centuries to build.

And consider the money. Every day this stalemate continues, Government's exposure grows. Idle equipment, deteriorating works, and looming legal claims all cost money, our money. We have seen this film before. On the Mbale–Soroti–Tororo road, a delay of 509 days ended with Government paying out nearly 8 million US dollars (30 billion shillings) in compensation. According to a Parliamentary Budget Committee report, only 10 of 85 road projects were on schedule, a completion rate of barely 12 percent. Unfinished projects worth some 400 million dollars, from the Kampala–Jinja Expressway to Rukungiri–Kihiihi–Ishasha, tell the same sorry story. The Kabaare–Bunyonyi road must not become another line in that shameful list.

Mr. President, this is where I turn to you directly. You have given our country relative peace, and you have spoken tirelessly of transformation, of tourism, of roads that open the countryside. Yet time and again your best intentions are sabotaged on the ground by people whose true agenda is self-enrichment, not national development. A road is funded, a contract is signed, an advance is paid, and then the work simply stops while the public suffers and the coffers drain. This is the quiet sabotage that eats away at everything you say you want to build. I appeal to you to intervene in this specific matter, to demand answers, and to make it clear that abandoning a fully funded strategic road will carry consequences. When you act, saboteurs may pay attention.

To my fellow citizens, I say this: we are not helpless. In Hon. Eliab Naturinda Mporera we have a representative who did his homework, who mastered the details, and who brought our cry to the floor of Parliament with courage and clarity. That is what real representation looks like. His prayers are reasonable and urgent: that the Minister of Works present a full status report and a firm date for resuming works within seven days, and that the Attorney General examine Government's legal exposure so that we stop repeating costly mistakes. Let us all rally behind him. Let us write, speak, and demand until the machines return to the site.

The road to Lake Bunyonyi is short. Our patience should be shorter still.