At least 1 to 2 pedestrians are knocked each day while trying to cross the 17.5km Kampala Northern bypass. The Northern bypass is one of the roads with fast-moving traffic.
Although Kampala Northern bypass has footbridges at Kalerwe-Bwaise and Kawala-Bwaise road junction among other areas, several pedestrians opt to cross from either side through the heavy traffic.
Fatuma Zalwango, one of the people operating along the Kalerwe bridge, says that she has failed to use the footbridge due to a phobia for heights. She wants Uganda National Roads Authority-UNRA to cover the footbridge to help those with a phobia of heights to use it without fear of falling off.
Shafik Nkwanga, a welder operating along the Northern bypass, says that many people prefer to cross through the heavy traffic to save time instead of burning five minutes using the footbridge. He, however, says that the recent expansions have increased the number of accidents.
The same accidents happen at Nakawa Market, which also has a footbridge connecting to the market. Boda bodas riding in the opposite direction to beat the traffic jam often run into pedestrians.
Seka Kibirango from Nakawa Market said that people don’t want to use the footbridge because they think that it takes a lot of time to cross the road and end up being knocked.
Steven Ssambwa from Nakawa says that police used to deploy around the Nakawa footbridge to reduce the accidents, which is not the case now. He says that several vendors are knocked most in the morning when rushing for work and in the evening.
Currently, most of the footbridges are filled with garbage of all sorts. Our reporter found sacks of garbage and banana peelings dumped on the Kalerwe footbridge making it very untidy. Ronald Sunday Ssekanjako, the overall supervisor of casual workers in Kawempe division, said that cleaning the footbridges, roundabouts and all UNRA roads that are in Kampala is outside their mandate.
“Among the places we are supposed to clean bridges are not included that is why we don’t clean them; it needs to be included among places that we are supposed to clean then we shall do our work,” Ssekanjako said.
