The petitioners who include Juliet Nakabuye Kakande, the Masaka City Woman MP, Nyendo-Mukungwe and Kimanya-Kabonera divisions Chairpersons, and other lower council leaders.
A group of leaders in Masaka City Council has petitioned
the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development seeking an investigation into
alleged deletions and falsification of land titles by technical staff in zonal
offices.
The petitioners who include Juliet Nakabuye Kakande, the Masaka
City Woman MP, Nyendo-Mukungwe and Kimanya-Kabonera divisions Chairpersons, and other
lower council leaders, accuse the staff at the Ministry of Lands Zonal
Offices in the area of aiding unscrupulous transfers and deletion of land
titles from the digital Land Information Management System-LIMS.
Kakande indicates that they want the Ministry of Lands to
carry out an inquiry into the operations of technical staff at the zonal offices,
blaming them for the mess in land ownership and management which has caused disputes in Masaka.
She says, they have established that several public and private
assets in Masaka have multiple land titles, and some of the genuine titles get
deleted from the system for selfish intentions.
The petitioners indicate that some of the affected public assets
that have overlapping land titles include, Masaka Liberation Square,
the Golf Course, Children Park, Children Rehabilitation Center at Kijjabwemi, Masaka
Sports Recreation Grounds, Hill Road Public School Bwala, the City Garbage
dumping site at Bulando among other prime properties.
Kakande argues that the original land titles for many public properties have since gone missing without any trace both within Masaka
City Council and in the digitalized Land Information Management System-LIMS.
She suspects that the irregularities are committed by a cartel
of staff in the Land Zonal Offices who connive with some people in local
government for selfish interests, hence the need for an inquiry.
//Cue in:
“tulina ebintu…..
Cue out: ….tulina
okusitukiramu.”//
Simon Ndawula Banalya, the LCI Chairperson for Cinema Cell in
Masaka City, also indicates that they have also come across cases of
irregular conversion of lease-hold into freehold certificates of ownership.
He says that it is high time the Ministry of Land commissions
a special inquiry into the operations of the staff at its Zonal offices and committees
connected to the registration process of land titles.
Zaituni Muyobu, the Secretary for Woman Affairs in Old Kkumbu
Housing Estates argues that many occupants risk being thrown out of their homes after titles of their houses were irregularly allocated to other
people.
She threatens that affected persons may resort to violence as a resort to protect their rights tenancy, should the responsible Ministry
decline to resolve the emerging dispute by investigating and reprimanding
culprits of outright fraud.
//Cue in:
“tumaze emyaka nga….
Cue out: ….mukigonjoole
nga bukyali.”//
The petition comes at a time when the authorities in
Masaka City are in the process of reviewing the register of all public
properties in the area, in which they also want to establish their status of
ownership.
The review was sanctioned last month, by Vincent Okrut, the
Masaka City Town Clerk following reports of the disappearance of several titles of public
assets in the area.
