By Ojok Robert Mone

Omoro District

Omoro district has started maintaining 10 major roads measuring 124km at the tune of one billion shillings, Road rehabilitation grant given to all districts and cities.

Out of the one billion shillings, one hundred million shall be spent on maintenance of road equipment and administration shall use Fifty million and the actual eight hundred and fifty million shillings shall be spent on fuel, allowances of operators, procurement of culverts, hire of masons to work on the bridges and buying stones and quarry among others.  
   
While launching the works, the member of parliament of Tochi County, Peter Okot expressed concern where government has been spending a lot in working on national roads used by few people compered to district and community access roads being used by about 80% of total population.

“We are rural and agro-based community where these roads shall unlock most of our areas to have access to market, health centers, schools and improvement in security” Peter Okot added.


District road equipment on one of the roads to be worked on

Without disclosing the completion period of the entire works, the acting district engineer Santo Ojok Coo-pil says the roads shall be upgraded to class three district roads to the width of 7.4meters. “We are going to carryout things like reshaping, light graveling, compaction, swamp raising, open mightier drainages and culvert installation,” Mr.Coo-pol noted.     

The roads to be worked on are, Labora-Loyoajonga-acet, Lakwatomer-Abili, pida-pageya-labora, Tochi Atyang-Opit, Palenga-Oduku-Lelaobaro, Otema-Angaba, Awere-malaba-Ayer, Opit-Lwala-Burkweyo, Abili-Angaba, Atede-Lapinyoloyo totaling to 124.4Kms.

 
The current state of 6.0kms Otema-Angaba road


The roads selected are both district and community access roads. The district chairperson of Omoro Douglas Peter Okello says district had been grabbling with challenges of roads due to large kilometers of works to be done with little resource allocation annually by central government.

Omoro has a total of 958kms road networks of which 539 is district roads, 382 community access roads and 34Kms of Urban roads.

Francis Ojara the local council chairperson of Angaba attributed poor health and emergency response in the areas to inaccessibility.

The woman member of parliament Catherine Lamwaka who is also member of district roads committee challenges the district to ensure value for money and avoid Pseudo works with all the One Billion shillings the parliament has approved.

COVER PHOTO: Omoro district woman MP, Catherine Lamwaka on the driver`s seat, standing next to her is the Omoro District Chairman, Okello Peter Douglas Okao, sitting next to the Woman MP is Tochi county MP Okot Peter By Ojok Robert Mone