Kigali-Gatuna traffic to resume in 6 days - Officials
Wednesday May 16 2018
A section of the Kigali-Gatuna main road cut off on May 13,2018 at a few kilometers from the Rwanda-Uganda border following days of heavy rains. PHOTO |CYRIL NDEGEYA
Rwanda authorities have set six days to restore traffic at Kigali-Gatuna highway following a road cut off that paralysed trade with the region.
A section of Kigali-Gatuna road linking the country with Uganda, and one of the busiest regional trade corridors, burst on Monday following days of heavy rains.
This saw all the heavy trucks compelled to use other gateway like Kagitumba and Cyanika to get to their destinations, a situation to prevail for the next one week pending immediate works to help traffic return to normalcy, according to Rwanda’s Ministry of Infrastructure.
“This is an important road to our market, and that’s why we need to find a temporary bypass as soon as we can to avoid impact on the economy. Then, we shall start working on a lasting solution,” State Minister for transport Jean de Dieu Uwihanganye, told Rwanda Today.
Re-alignment
Mr Uwihanganye said a long-term solution being considered would be a re-alignment of the road, which required relocating about eight families that reside in the surrounding of the road down the hill.
Gicumbi District officials have been tasked to speed up the relocation process for the families while machines and workers of Horizon Construction started works on the site.
Only light vehicles will be allowed to continue using the route where estimates 180 trucks plied daily delivering goods in Kigali largely from the port of Mombasa in Kenya through Uganda.
Engineers expressed concerns that heavy trucks could potentially cause complete damages or accident of the road which remained partially cut off on Tuesday.
According to transporters, the disruption affected hundreds of the trucks that had already reached the border and those that were already on the way to Gatuna as they had to contend with congestion, delay and costs associated with diverting to other routes.
On Tuesday, business was not as usual for freight business at Gatuna border post. A few trucks were still parked with drivers awaiting the instruction from the owners on whether to divert to Kagitumba or Cyanika borders or wait till a bypass is available for them to proceed.
Fresh costs
“The goods were cleared Monday at night on the Ugandan side but was stopped on the Rwandan side. I informed the freight owner in Kigali who is yet to get back to me since returning would require incurring customs and road user costs afresh,” said Dennis Kamanzi, a driver who left Mombasa last week on Saturday.
Fred Seka, the Chairman of the Rwanda’s Freight Forwarders Association told Rwanda Today that the traders and transporters were all communicated about the disruption, thus the implications were justified.
Adverse weather events as a result of intense precipitation in Rwanda had until last week caused damage to 25 national roads and more than 44 district roads in different parts of the country.
Ministry of infrastructure puts the needed cost for immediate repairs at Rwf5 billion while in total Rwf13 billion was needed to carry out repairs for all road and bridge infrastructures.
Officials said that while damages to national roads were given priority, for districts roads immediate priority was going to those connecting people to vital infrastructure like health facilities.
Infrastructure, beside the agriculture sector, bore the biggest brunt of the heavy rains that hit Rwanda over the past weeks claiming lives of 128 people from April 1.