*The promise* On two occasions; in August 2005 and in July 2009, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced plans to expand and upgrade Arua Airfield, along with five others, to international standards.
In an interview with Daily Monitor on August 29, 2005, Mr Ignie Igundura, the spokesperson of CAA, indicated that Arua had been given priority because of its strategic location and huge business potential. “Arua airfield, according to last year’s data from CAA, handled an average of eight aircraft movements (per day) and is the second busiest [in the country] after Entebbe International Airport,” Igundura said. Again in July 2013, the then State Minister for Transport, Mr Stephen Chebrot, announced that CAA would, as part of a 20 year civil aviation master plan valued at $400 million (about Shs1.4 trillion), commit at least $160 million (about Shs576 billion) million towards the expansion and upgrade of Arua Airfield. Mr Chebrot said the master plan targeted increasing competitiveness and enhancing Uganda’s reputation as East Africa’s tourism and investment destination. The airfield, one of 12 administered by CAA and one of five upcountry airports authorised to handle cross-border air traffic for promoting tourism among member states of the East African region, is considered key in the development of a town touted as a prime investment destination. Given the proximity of Arua to Uganda’s common border with both Southern Sudan and DR Congo, the town is seen as one with a huge potential to grow into a regional hub servicing Uganda and its two neighbours. Arua Airfield experienced a mega boom during the 20-year Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency in parts of Northern Uganda, with many Arua-bound travellers opting for the less risky and quicker one-hour air travel instead of taking the tedious and risky road transport. Besides taking nearly eight hours on the road, travellers risked snaking through the Murchison Falls National Park, or the thickets on the Karuma-Pakwach road, which the rebels had turned into springboards from which they often launched deadly attacks on vehicles making the 520-kilometre journey between Kampala and Arua. Dozens of buses, commuter taxis and other small cars were ambushed and destroyed by rebels who would later kill the occupants before either looting or destroying whatever goods or valuables they would find. The full extent of the destruction has never been quantified. The rebel menace saw four commercial airline companies, namely Eagle Air, United Airlines, West Nile Air and Challenge Air open shop and operate the Entebbe-Arua route. Those were later joined by Air Uganda, but the four have since folded business, leaving Air Uganda as the sole operator on the route. *CAA’s plan* CAA’s plan was to erect a new terminal building, extend the 1.8 kilometre runway to accommodate bigger crafts and upgrade the surface from gravel to bitumen and install visual aid devices, including automatic direction finder to facilitate landing at night or under foggy conditions. Also included in the plan, which was meant to have been set into motion during the financial year 2005/2006, was the widening of the car park, construction of new staff quarters to allow employees reside close by the facility and be available on short notice. *Status* Indeed, a new terminal building was erected, but is yet to be completed. Work on expanding the runway was embarked, but has never been taken beyond grading to increase its length and width while the promised work on the tarmac surface has never been undertaken. Similarly, work on the installation of navigation equipment and construction of staff houses has never been embarked on. While Mr Ignie Igundura, recently told Daily Monitor that works on all the airfields that the statutory organization had planned to upgrade had hit a snag due to funding shortfalls, word in Arua suggests that there have also been issues evolving around disagreements over the kind and levels of compensation for land that CAA needed to acquire to facilitate the upgrade.
_______________________________________________ WestNileNet mailing list WestNileNet@kym.net http://orion.kym.net/mailman/listinfo/westnilenet WestNileNet is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. _______________________________________________
