By Mulengera ReportersIn a Thursday YouTube interview with journalist Sir Simon Muyanga Lutaaya, Gen Katumba Wamala (who many believe has been made to look vulnerable and to become diminished through the way his successor Fred Byamukama has caused the President to become publicly angry about alleged corruption in the Works sector to the extent of firing several senior engineers and officials) shared his version of what happened. He made it clear he is happy about the President’s decision to instigate the IGG investigations into how the overall cost for the Busega-Mpigi road project skyrocketed from the original Shs547bn to Shs1.3trn. Katumba Wamala, who was the Minister of Works for 5 years having replaced his former boss Eng Monica Azuba, explained that much of the mess was originated from UNRA, which was rationalised and put under his Works Ministry in December 2024. He says prior to that, UNRA was a totally independent entity over which he had no control. He says he was always eyes on from a distance and hands off UNRA matters because his hands were tied. Katumba Wamala, who rarely gives interviews and was perceived by some Muyanga viewers in the comments section as being in a bit of panicky mode, said that the pre-December 2024 UNRA management was only answerable to their Board and the Finance Ministry under Matia Kasaija, and not to him. He says that UNRA was always a complicated entity as MPs themselves discovered during the process to have it rationalized and its employees brought to be under the Works Ministry. Katumba made it clear that the Busega road mess wouldn’t have escalated to that level if he was authorized to have more direct authority over UNRA than was actually the case. Katumba says that it was UNRA under Allen Kagina which opted to alter the original design for Busega-Mpigi road project by adding many more connecting roads in order to cater for what they saw as a growing motor traffic problem on that road going all the way to Masaka and beyond. These connections were leading to Mityana, Lungala and other places, which Gen Katumba couldn’t readily recall. He said all these were never part of the original design. That the UNRA top management contracted their own redesign consultant who came up with a new design for the road. He said the UNRA mess would become very outrageous, many times prompting the President to write letters directing him to intervene and help to fix things. Katumba said it was as a result of the UNRA redesign and realignment of the road that the Busega-Mpigi project cost changed from Shs547bn to Shs1.3trn. That in taking that decision, Gen Katumba was totally sidelined and the leadership at UNRA preferred to deal with officials at Matia Kasaija-led Ministry of Finance. Katumba said that the UNRA projects, including the Busega-Mpigi one, only came to be under him as the Works Minister from December 2024 after rationalization of the Authority back to the mother Ministry. He immediately realised something wasn’t right on Busega and immediately asked the Ministry’s chief engineer Kitonsa to put together a technical committee to inquire into what motivated the change of design resulting into the cost of more than Shs1.3trn. The Katumba technical committee had a total of 12 seasoned engineers, including some identified through the Engineers Registration Board. Their report discovered that the Shs1.37trn was too much and recommended Shs1.08trn. Katumba says there was also another cost of Shs1.7trn which the contractor was demanding. Katumba didn’t explain why the whole thing remained quiet and it took the intervention of the President for the entire scandal to be unmasked to the public and to get the officers responsible sanctioned. Gen Katumba Wamala, who says many of the people who the President has forced out of office are innocent because they were never part of any decision making, told Muyanga that he shared his findings contained in the technical report on Busega-Mpigi with the then Finance Minister Matia Kasaija and the Prime Minister Robina Nabbanja but still no action was taken. The same report was shared with the funder of the project and some steps were about to be taken. Katumba Wamala also registered his sympathies for the Works PS Waiawa Bageya, recently forced to step aside, who he says is an innocent old man who did nothing wrong. He added that he is certain that his innocence and views on what exactly went wrong will be validated through the ongoing investigations by both the IGG and the Physical Infrastructure Committee of Parliament. Katumba said he can’t fail to sleep over the anger and disappointment manifested in the President’s letters because he knows there is nothing wrong he did for the five years he served as Minister at Works. He made it clear he has never received bribes from any contractor to compromise his sense of judgment on any project. He said that for the 47 years he has been in public service he has always been deliberate and cautious not to be involved in corruption dealings. He said between the year 1986 and 1989, it was very easy to steal public resources without being caught but he still didn’t steal anything. He said he is a Rotarian who believes in the “service above self” mantra and that is why he will never regret not helping himself on public coffers even when he had chance to do so. Katumba said he didn’t sanction any of the engineers the President has fired so far because he didn’t find or see any wrongdoing in them. He said he was hopeful the same people will be vindicated once the investigations by IGG and Parliament are concluded. Katumba also regretted lack of support from Parliament for the time he was Minister of Works. Saying he had been christened by MPs “the lamenting Minister,” the former CDF recalled how Parliament one time gave him a fictitious supplementary of Shs1.4trn which money never came to enable him pay off works contractors who had done work for government without prompt payment. He blamed the Finance Ministry for refusing to adequately prioritize the funding of projects under the Works sub sector which is why Chinese firms end up dominating deals because they use the pre-financing approach. He commended local contractors like Abubaker Technical Services (on Matuga-Semuto-Kapeka & Busunju-Kiboga-Hoima) and Dott Services on the Luwero-Butalangu road project. He said even when there are big problems such as the government not paying contractors on time, these local Ugandan firms operate on very expensive borrowed money and somehow keep in business. He said these local contractors operate under extreme difficulties because of lack of adequate support from the Finance Ministry. Katumba asserted that these harsh financial conditions also explain why Energo Projects is broke and struggling to deliver the Mubende-Fort Portal Road project. He called on UDC to find a way to help such local contractors to cope and avoid being totally forced out of business by their better-funded Chinese competitors. Katumba also enumerated some of the great things he did for the country while at Works including working with the Board to advise the President to hire the Ethiopian aviation expatriate to help reorganize Uganda Airlines. He said also overseeing the rationalisation of a difficult entity like UNRA was no mean feat. Saying there is a lot of good that he did but he is always reluctant to talk much about, lest he gets misunderstood, Gen Katumba also referred to the improvements at URC which he said had been destroyed under the RVR arrangement. He also spoke about infrastructural improvements at Entebbe Airport which he said is now a much better place than he found it. He also bragged about the Kampala flyover project which has greatly decongested traffic that side of Clock Tower. He also referred to improvements in marine transport which he said was synonymous with broken vessels before he took charge. He also spoke about projects like the Saaka bridge in Busoga, Kapchorwa-Suam (83kms road), 46kms Masaka-Bukakata done by Arab Contractors, 72kms Pallisa-Tirinyi-Kamonkoli-Kumi road all of which he said were completed and delivered on time without escalating the costs as was the case with Busega-Mpigi. Repeatedly making it clear he wasn’t scared of the possibility of being implicated in any bribes-taking schemes, Gen Katumba also referenced progress on the Standard Gauge Railway project. On the high costs of road construction being higher in Uganda than in countries like Kenya, Gen Katumba justified the same on factors such as ours being a landlocked country meaning stuff like bitumen has to be imported through Mombasa port in Kenya. He also spoke about fuel costs while asking the moderator and his viewers to reflect on what the litre of fuel cost as of 2019 when the Busega-Mpigi project began compared to what the same costs today. It was important for the usually laid back Katumba Wamala to open up and speak through this Muyanga Lutaaya YouTube interview because his silence was beginning to be construed as admission of complicity in many of the inefficiencies and scandals his successor Fred Byamukama has unmasked barely three months in office. The moderator put it to him that many Ugandans are disappointed upon the Byamukama-induced realisation that their favourite veteran army general (in the military since the 1970s) had slept on the job (doing nothing about the deeply rooted corruption) while serving as the Minister of Works. Katumba Wamala vigorously rejected this and sought the Muyanga interview opportunity to set the record straight. 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