French company, Egis Road Operation, has been awarded a contract to collect road toll and effect proper maintenance of the Kampala-Entebbe Express Highway (KEE).
The company specialises in the operation and maintenance of road infrastructure, roads and urban and inter-urban motorways, bridges, tunnels, with conventional or open-road toll systems, in developing and emerging countries.
“I am happy to report that the contract with the Kampala-Entebbe Express Highway operation and maintenance provider received the clearance of the Solicitor General on Thursday, 11 February 2021,” said Uganda National Roads Authority boss, Allen Kagina.
“The contract shall be signed to allow the provider to start mobilisation, sensitisation of the public and implementation, all by the end of this Financial Year,” she added during a press conference in Kampala this week.
The Expressway was commissioned by President Museveni in June 2018.
The investment in the road was premised on the bigger plans of Government providing alternative faster road service at a premium fee, through an expressway network.
The first of this was the KEE.
The four lane toll highway has been open to all motorists at no fee for a year despite the agreement that subjects the road to tolling as a way of paying back the loan acquired to construct it.
Kagina said collection of a toll requires an enabling legal framework, which was put in place by Parliament in 2020.
The Expressway was commissioned by President Museveni in June 2018.
Tolls
This also necessitated an operator to see the efficient management and maintenance of the road assets while ensuring that they are able to return on the investment through collection of tolls.
Kagina said “the procurement of this provider was severely interrupted by the procurement administrative reviews which led to a delay of over a year” until the recent award to Egis Road Operation.
Patrick Muleme, the Head of Network Designs at UNRA recently said once the new operator takes on the management of the Kampala-Entebbe Expressway, security and safety issues will be under total control.
“The operator, in cooperation with the security agencies, will be in charge of ensuring that the users who will be paying are safe and secure on the road by providing security lights, cameras at different corners of the road as well as maintaining it,” he said.
Recently there was a shooting incident at Nambigirwa Bridge on the Entebbe expressway which left two people dead.
The Kampala-Entebbe expressway is currently Uganda’s only toll road with a total of three main toll plazas at Busega-Kampala, Kajjasi and Mpala and a total of 26 toll gates.
The road was constructed by the China Communications Construction Company at a cost of Shs1.8trillion, partly obtained from the Export and Import (Exim) Bank of China.
According to its website, Egis Road Operation says its firm’s international spread gives it a unique capacity to set up companies that handle operating (Egis Road Operation has 28 operating subsidiaries) and maintenance for new projects, with locally recruited staff properly trained for the job.
The city of Amsterdam renewed his contract with Egis for on-street parking until the end of December 2023.
Earlier this month, the Singapore based fund Cube Highways has awarded Egis two contracts for the tolling operations on the Jhansi-Lalitpur stretch of NH-44 for a period of 30 years.
