By Jackson Onyango
Several Ministers have surrendered their official vehicles to be used by delegates arriving for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the G77+China summits starting next week.
Figures show that about 80 percent of the required 800 vehicles have been handed over by the government institutions for inspection at Kololo Ceremonial Grounds.
The vehicles, some of which have been parked at Kololo for three weeks, will be handed back to the respective institutions after the two huge meetings.
Of these are 170 brand new sports utility vehicles, 140 of which were donated by the Chinese government and 30 of the same brand procured by the government.
The state minister for transport Mr Fred Byamukama is optimistic that they will receive the 800 vehicles needed to transport the delegates ahead of the events.
“We budgeted for 800 but so far we are in six hundred something and we have not gone to NGOs. They are purely government of vehicles. The purpose why we have assembled them early is to ensure we have the numbers we need,” Byamukama said.
Ministers from the Ministry of Works, Justice and Constitutional Affairs and those at the Office of the Prime Minister have handed in their vehicles.
The vehicles including ambulances, pick-up trucks and buses have been parked at Kololo for three weeks.
Officials receiving the vehicles say they have put in place mechanisms to ensure that the lengthy period the vehicles have been parked does not compromise the effective functionality of the equipment.
“We started to collect these vehicles for the non-entitled officers on December 11 up to 18. What we have been doing to ensure that the vehicles are still operational is fire it every 2-3 days. We have a team here to ensure they start up these vehicles,” Mr Tony Kavuma, the Chief Mechanical Engineer, Ministry of Works and Transport told KFM.
Starting this weekend, Entebbe and Kampala roads are expected to be extremely busy as delegates and advance teams of the 25 presidents arrive in the country.
