According to the assets inventory by the Acting City Principal Treasurer Harriet Nakafeero, at least 35 known public properties that include pieces of land and buildings cannot have their certificates of ownership traced in the city storage system. They include the Mayor’s Chambers, Public Health and Education department offices, and Nyendo public market,
A special inquiry into the management of Masaka City Council properties has unearthed collusion that has led to the suspicious loss of several public assets in the area.
Masaka City Stakeholders Committee initiated a special inquest In June last year into the circumstances under which several public assets in the area, mainly land titles, were transferred to private individuals. The committee chaired by the Kimamya-Kabonera division Member of Parliament Dr Abed Bwanika was concerned that the city had lost several of its properties under illicit circumstances.
According to the assets inventory by the Acting City Principal Treasurer Harriet Nakafeero, at least 35 known public properties that include pieces of land and buildings cannot have their certificates of ownership traced in the city storage system. They include the Mayor’s Chambers, Public Health and Education department offices, and Nyendo public market,
The others are; the children’s park, Masaka City public library and resource centres, the Masaka Taxi park, Kkumbu and Gayanza community playgrounds, Kyabakuza Health Centre II, and the City garbage dumping site which was procured in 2015 among others.
However, Bwanika says their inquiries have established that some land titles were hidden through syndicates and collusion between some of the staff. He says that have learnt that some of the land titles were deliberately sold off by technical staff who connived with previous political leaders and accordingly wrote them off as missing properties.
Masaka City Woman Member of Parliament Juliet Kakande says that many of the land titles that had been declared missing were instead hidden by staff and that the inquiry team has managed to recover a number of them. They include the Masaka Children Park and the garbage dumping sites, which she says were on the verge of being transferred to a private individual without any payments to the City council.
Besides the properties that were sold off by the previous Masaka Municipal Council leaders in the guise of clearing outstanding debts, she says that some titles were stealthily smuggled and illegally transferred to new owners
As a result, Kakande says that they have resolved to re-examine all the allocations conducted on all properties that were previously owned by Masaka Municipal Council to establish the individuals that were involved in the transactions.
Luganda byte//Cue in; “tugenda kukuuma…
Cue out…..ekibuga n’ekibyeddiza.”//
Mousa Wamala, a Member of the Masaka City Development Forum says they have repeatedly complained about the unscrupulous loss of public assets in the area; preferring that the culprits are prosecuted. According to him, such illegal transactions were usually conducted during periods of political transition.
Masaka City Mayor Florence Namayanja explains that they are looking forward to using the probe findings to facilitate the recovery of assets that were irregularly lost.
