Udart plans to relocate from waterlogged Jangwani offices

Dar es Salaam. The Dar es Salaam urban rapid transport services provider–Udart disclosed yesterday that they were looking for a piece of land for building new headquarters.

The Udart headquarters are located at Jangwani valley area where they have been experiencing floods whenever it rains.

Udart public relations manager Deus Bugaywa said during a press briefing that the company has decided to relocate its headquarters in order to avoid unnecessary costs they incur whenever rains pound the city.

“We were repairing 29 buses that were not working after last month’s heavy rains, but before we could finish fixing the problems, it rained again last weekend causing more damage to our buses,” he said.

He noted that the last weekend’s downpour destroyed the depot and terminal’s fence.

According to him, before the end of this month, Udart is looking forward to receiving 70 buses, which are still at the Port of Dar es Salaam.

“We were supposed to have 305 buses during the first phase, but we are so far operating only 140 buses, so just imagine, if the 70 buses were also in operation. Therefore, we have decided to look for a secure area for our buses,” he said.

Mr Bugaywa further explained that their current Jangwani garage has an oil fuel substation, but they have not used it since last week because the area is still waterlogged.

Last year, President John Magufuli tasked the management of Udart to generate profit from the project to repay the Sh317 billion World Bank soft loan used in financing the project.

He said that they should ensure that they generate sufficient profit in order to implement other projects.

Tanzania was losing approximately Sh4 billion daily due to traffic congestion in Dar es Salaam.

The World Bank’s Vice-President for Africa, Mr Makhtar Diop believes that the Udart project is not only a strategy to improving transport infrastructure, but most importantly delivery of quality services to the people.