A parliamentary committee wants government to review and renegotiate its agreement with a Chinese company contracted to build the eastern route of the Kenya- Uganda Standard Gauge Railway (SGR).
In its report from a benchmarking tour of Ethiopia’s SGR, the committee on Physical Infrastructure says the overall costs and railway classification in Uganda are indefensible.
The report was last week tabled before Parliament by committee chairman Denis Sabiiti. It says that when they visited Ethiopia and Kenya last year, committee members discovered that the Class 1 railway which China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) fronted for Uganda is Class 2 in Ethiopia.
The committee observed that the Ethiopia SGR network has been built to Class 1 standard with a maximum design speed of 120 kilometres per hour for a passenger train, 80km per hour for cargo train, plus an annual tonnage of the SGR network is 25 million tonnes.
For Uganda’s class two specifications,Ugandaproposes to construct the SGR network to Class I standard with a design speed for passenger train of 120km per hour and cargo train of 100km per hour, plus an annual tonnage of 20 million tonnes.
“The branding of Class 2 as Parliament in session Class 1 is likely to lead to an inflation of costs. There is, therefore, no justification for Uganda to refer to its class of railway as Class 1…it should be noted that construction of Class 2, rather than Class 1, railway would lead to a significant reduction in construction costs from the tentative $12.8 billion currently proposed for building the entire network,” the report reads in part.
The report says Uganda’s SGR is highly over-priced: the 273km Kampala-Malaba route is set to cost $2.3bn (Shs 8 trillion). This means one track kilometre will cost $8.42 million (Shs 29 billion).
Ethiopia, on the other hand, will spend $5 million (Shs 17.5 billion) per track kilometre for the Addis Ababa-Mieso-Dewele route. MPs want government to review its contract with CHEC, with a view of constructing a Class 2 railway in order to reduce the costs of construction of the Eastern route, and maintain Class 2 for the Western and Northern routes.
They also want punitive action against any officials found to have misled the government.
“The management team has been deliberately misguiding and misleading the country on the actual work to be undertaken on the SGR,” the committee argues.
OFFICIAL THEFT?
Speaking at the launch of Parliament Week on Monday, Speaker Rebecca Kadaga lamented over the gross inflation of costs of infrastructure projects in Uganda.
“That is one of the channels for stealing money from the people of Uganda. As Parliament, members should be steadfast to put an end to this level of official theft covered by the law and beautiful motions,” Kadaga tasked legislators.
Officials from SGR, however, dispute the report’s findings. According to the SGR project coordinator, Eng Kasingye Kyamugambi, the class of railway is defined using Chinese standards.
Kyamugabi told The Observer in a statement that the classification is defined by role, nature, design running of passenger trains and traffic volume of both passenger and freight trains.
“Uganda has designed and will construct Class 1 as per provisions of the protocol. Ethiopia opted for class 2 for their own country’s peculiar reasons. Importantly, the cost is not significantly influenced by the type of class other than the kilometres of bridges/ viaducts, geotechnical conditions, hydrological condition, slope/ gradients etc,” he explained.
Kyamugambi said it was misleading for the committee to only look at investment costs, not operation and maintenance costs, which significantly affect the quality of service.
Furthermore, Kyamugabi explained, Uganda’s terrain, unlike Ethiopia’s flat topography, is littered with hills, swamps and rivers and will necessitate construction of bridges, whose costs must be factored into the construction.
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