Uganda Railways Corporation (URC) has insisted there was no omission or commission of offence regarding the fate of 394 railway wagons that cannot be traced. This was plea was made before parliamentarians probing the management of the corporation’s assets, arising from the Auditor General’s failure to get satisfactory responses over the 394 wagons, valued at about 220.8 billion shillings.
Parliament also handed over URC Managing Director Benon Kajuna to the police to record a statement in the case over the wagons that cannot be accounted for. Some 113 of them belonged to URC and the rest to Kenya Railways Corporation.
The Auditor General’s report found that out of 412 railway wagons initially reported missing from Uganda Railways Corporation, only 18 had been traced. In 2006, Uganda and Kenya granted a joint railway concession to Rift Valley Railways (RVR), structured to last for 25 years until 2030. However, in the 11th year, the concession was terminated over several claims by the two governments, including failure by RVR to meet the set turnaround targets.
Immediately, URC was directed to take over, improve and sustain railway operations, and a needs assessment was conducted for “the Permanent Way, Rolling Stock, and Human Capital,” after which recommendations were made, according to URC head of public relations John Lennon Sengendo. In 2010, a joint verification was undertaken between URC and RVR, and a total of 1,414 wagons under the custody of the concessionaire were physically accounted for. RVR says 131 wagons belonging to URC could not be physically verified in that year.
In 2013, RVR migrated all railway assets to a new system, Translogic (integrated digital logistics and tracking platform used to automate rail operations, monitor rolling stock, and trace cargo in real time), from the ACIS that the two countries were using. However, they say no new physical assets verification was undertaken in 2013 by RVR, and thus, historical assets discrepancies were transferred to the new system.
Following the repudiated of the concession by the ministry of finance, planning and economic development in 2018, URC took over from RVR without verification of assets. Hence, following the joint verifications done in January and November 2024, KRC agreed to its missing wagons and the verification report was signed by both parties. And to date, according to URC, KRC has never claimed compensation for the wagons, nor raised any demand against URC regarding the wagons.
The failure by RVR to account for or return the missing wagons, was one of the reasons for the termination of the concession, he says. The recent Auditor General’s reports on URC have claimed financial losses, staffing gaps including hundreds of unfilled positions, inadequate skill sets affecting service delivery, and the need for capacity building and training, among others.
URC has also responded to the accusations that more than 25 billion shillings was spent on staff training, and that many of the said staff never left the country nor attended any trainings abroad. The media reports from the prob by parliament’s physical infrastructure committee, show that 25 billion shillings, funds from a loan from Spain, was spent by URC on staff training.
URC has a total of about 340 employees. Sengendo says that while URC got a 29 million euros loan from Spain in 2019, it was for railway rehabilitation after the 2018 RVR concession termination, and onboarded MS Consultrans and Imathia.
He refutes the reports that training took 25 billion shillings, saying that instead, out of the 29 million euros, 4.82 million euros (about 20.8 billion shillings using today’s exchange rate) went to the capacity building component.The money covered URC refresher courses, contractor operations in Uganda, local and expert staff costs over three years, with all funds paid directly to the Spanish firm, Imathia.
The rest of the funds went to the detailed technical design for the track refurbishment of the Kampala-Namanve and Namanve-Mukono line, the preliminary design of the Kampala Multimodal Hub and the supply of 4,605 European steel rails for the rehabilitation of the Kampala-Mukono line.
Under the component, URC says all funds for the contractor’s operations in Uganda, for three years, were drawn from this component, including paying their Ugandan staff and experts, among others. It adds that all project funds were sent directly to the contractor in Spain, and no funds were directly disbursed to URC for this project, meaning that no spend was made at source by URC for the project-URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
