{UAH} Smooth roads? In Kampala? Musisi shows the way

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Smooth-roads--In-Kampala--Musisi-shows-the-way/-/434750/2405996/-/dvdswpz/-/index.html

Smooth roads? In Kampala? Musisi shows the way

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By Frederick Golooba-Mutebi

Posted  Saturday, August 2  2014 at  11:53

In Summary

• Much of her success has been possible because under her administration, revenue collection has increased by 83 per cent.
• The good lady has had to blast her way through much old-fashioned resistance.

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One of the most easily recognisable names in Uganda's capital city, Kampala today, is Musisi. It is the surname of one Jennifer, the executive director of the Kampala Capital City Authority. KCCA, as it is popularly known, replaced Kampala City Council, the municipal authority that for many years presided over the city's progressive decay, in 2011.

In the same year, President Yoweri Museveni appointed Mrs Musisi to spearhead efforts not only to arrest Kampala's dilapidation, but also to reverse it. Until then, Musisi had been a public servant in the Uganda Revenue Authority, one of the very few bits of the public sector that, challenges here and there aside, actually works and does a great deal of what it is mandated to do.

She had quit URA to go into business for herself, setting up a cake-baking enterprise. Her appointment did raise eyebrows. She was not known to have been anywhere near running anything as large as a city, let alone a small town.

What did she know about municipal management, and why did President Museveni think she stood any chance of success where larger-than-life political figures had failed, some wondered.

It was not too difficult to sympathise with the sceptics. She might have been a high-up at URA for some years and could, without doubt lay claim to some responsibility for its achievements, but as far as local government matters were concerned, she was coming from nowhere.

Well, just over three years since she stepped forward to embark on what to some seemed like a suicide mission, Mrs Musisi has demonstrated with much success that she's made of sterner stuff than those who did not know her had assumed.

Kampala may not yet be the city its discerning residents want it to be, but it is well on the way to turning upside down its former image as the most disorganised and dysfunctional of East Africa's capital cities. Once famous for frighteningly large potholes in almost all of its roads, now the city boasts several newly resurfaced roads whose smoothness is alien to many who have lived there for years.

Indeed, those below the age of 40 have never experienced such a thing before and those aged 50 and above would have last experienced it in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before the country descended into the political chaos that lasted well into the late 1980s.

And the repairs are not limited to the city's main boulevards, if one can call them that, but even to minor roads in the suburbs.

Equally significant is the cleanliness one now sees around the city. Gone are the heaps of garbage one used to encounter all over the place, which had turned Kampala into an open-air sanctuary for rubbish-eating marabou storks.

Today one sees cleaners and garbage collectors going about their business with a seriousness that, only a few years ago, would have been difficult to countenance. A few days ago, as I was going about my business, I saw a large dry branch hanging from an electricity transmission line and blocking part of one of the city's busy road junctions.

Having grown up in a Kampala where everybody, including municipal authority employees, minded each their own business and not the public interest, I did not even pause to think about what I had seen.

About 20 minutes later, however, I came back the same way. There at the junction was a KCCA truck parked just below the offending branch. It was a sobering sight. Three men wearing KCCA uniforms were trying to find a way to remove it.

If anyone needed evidence of how much change Jennifer Musisi has brought to Kampala, here it was. A few hours later, I was back in my local suburb.

For as long as I can remember, our local main road has been littered with potholes. Now here it was, being dug up by a grader. Soon, it seems, we shall be riding on smooth tarmac.

Ocen  Nekyon

Democracy is two Wolves and a Lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed Lamb contesting the results.

Benjamin Franklin

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