Heavy rains cut off Kabale-Rwanda highway

By Robert Muhereza & Emmy Mucunguzi  (email the author)


Posted Thursday, March 11 2010 at 00:00, Daily Monitor

Kabale

Heavy rains have cut off sections of the Kabale-Katuna highway, leaving dozens of trucks and several travellers stranded in Kabale town and at Katuna border post. Sections of the road, which links Uganda to Rwanda, sunk on Tuesday following days of heavy rains. The worst affected was the swampy Rukaranga village, five kilometres from Kabale town. The section in Buranga village, which is 14 kilometers from Kabale, was also affected.

With the tarmac wobbling, heavy trucks had to be stopped, for fear of further damage and risking travellers’ lives.

Eng. Asaph Abenaitwe, the Uganda National Roads Authority Kabale station chief, yesterday said measures were being put in place to reconstruct the damaged parts of the road. “Machines are moving to the damaged spot.

We are handling it as an emergency because this is an international road,” he said, adding that heavy vehicles had been barred from using the facility until the anomaly was fixed. “We can only accommodate small, light vehicles,” he added.

When Daily Monitor visited Rukaranga village, the side of the road that had sunk had been ringed off.

Mr Denis Nzairwe, the area LC3 chairman, told Daily Monitor that this was the second time the road was experiencing similar troubles, the first being in 2002 when heavy rains made the highway unusable. At that time, he added, transit vehicles to Rwanda and Burundi had to opt for the Mirima Hills-Ntungamo route while others went through Chanika town in Kisoro to get to their destinations.

“There is need to shift the road from the swamp to the raised grounds as a permanent solution,” Mr Nzairwe added.

Heavy rains across the country have wreaked havoc including setting off landslides in Bududa District that buried three villages and killed an estimated 300 people.