Arua Municipality has partnered with City Alliances International to implement a multi million shillings project to improve infrastructure in slums in the municipality. The shillings 167 million project will help improve infrastructure in the Gurua, Kenya ward, Tanganyika and Aduminia cells. Arua municipality is one of the five urban councils including Jinja, Mbarara, Kabale and Mbale to benefit from the project.
Under the project, the urban poor would be able to identify their needs and apply for funding from the established municipal development forums. Martin Andua, Arua Municipal Town clerk says that in the first phase the project will focus on infrastructural development. He says that under the second phase the municipality will provide an equivalent fund to be used as a revolving fund.
Andua explains that the program should have started in 2011 but it delayed because of some technical matters. He however, explains that the project will move faster now that it has been launched since residents already aware of the process to apply for the funds.
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Charles Asiki, the mayor of Arua municipality has warned members of the public against mishandling the funds once their sub projects get funding. He advises the residents to work hard since the project is being piloted. But some of the slum dwellers are skeptical whether the fund will have any visible impact saying the allocated funding it too little.
Ramadhan Buni, a resident of Gurua cells argues that the money will not be enough to implement even ten projects unless it will be spent on borehole drilling. Susan Atako, another slum dweller from Tanganyika says much as the project is good many residents will miss out. She suggests that instead of using the money as a revolving fund it should be spent on improving community infrastructure such as water access points and toilets.
But Geoffrey Edema, Arua Community Development Officer allays the fears of the residents saying once the pilot projects succeeds in the selected areas they would benefit from a 100 million US $ project.
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