Celebrations As Lira City Acquires Road Equipment with Local Revenue Fund

By Ambrose Ogwang

Lira City, Uganda : There was excitement on Wednesday in Lira City as the council unveiled a brand new Motor Grader procured at sh 1 billion.

The road equipment was bought using the money generated from the local revenue.

 and was delivered to the city authorities by the supplier (Victoria Equipments).

Lira City Clerk Vincent Okurut, said the grader being owned by the council for the first time in history of its creation will address the issue of poor road network in areas of maintenance and rehabilitation.

According to Okurut, this grader was bought on installment payment, which affected their operations in other sectors since much of the money had been channeled to paying the grader.

He expressed gratitude to members of Lira city council for making a provision in a budget and planned a procurement of their owned road equipment.

Meanwhile, Lira City Mayor, Sam Atul, explained that, they used to hire grader from Uganda Technical College-Lira at a cost of sh 600.000 per day,later its price increased to 1 million.

With the own grader purchased, Atul believed, the city will be able to save more from the budget allocated for the road works, something he considers a great achievement in his five-year office tenure.

Atul revealed that plans are underway to buy a roller for the city to have full road equipment as other cities are still waiting for the equipment delivery from the central government.

The Mayor ordered that the grader be fixed with a GPS monitoring machine that will be connected to his own phone. 

“The money used for acquiring the grader was from the local revenue collected from the taxpayers of Lira city. Instead of allocating it to facilitate extravagant tours and parties, we chose to buy the road equipment even when other politicians were blackmailing us that we were eating the council money,” Patrick Okwir, the Lira City Speaker explained.

In his address, Steven Odongo, the Lira Deputy Resident City Commissioner, thanked the council for acquiring their own grader even when the central government has supplied them. Odongo described the procurement of a grader as a ‘history made’ in the development of the city.

He urged the city authorities to put the equipment to good use.