The Minister Raphael Magyezi has also directed the Mbarara Central Market Vendors Association leadership chaired by Muhammed Nyombi to stop its operations and also halted the process of verifying lists until investigations are complete.
The Minister
of Local Government has directed the Mbarara City Clerk Asse Babireeba to
interdict and investigate two officials citing dubious allocations of Central
Market Lockups.
The Minister Raphael Magyezi has also directed the Mbarara Central Market Vendors Association leadership chaired by Muhammed Nyombi to stop
its operations and also halted the process of verifying lists until
investigations are complete.
The
officials who the Minister wants interdicted are; James Agaba, the Principal City Commercial Officer, his assistant Donati Mutahi.
The Minister says
the two should starting on April 11th stay out of the office as investigations are
carried out.
The Minister
says he is investigating the alleged victimization, conflict of interest and
corruption by the city officials, the verification committee, and the
Association leadership.
Runyankole
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Magyezi says
the verification committee failed its mandate by accepting fake documents,
allowing non-vendors to occupy stalls, charging a lot of money, and Association
leadership sharing many stalls among themselves among other issues.
Runyankole
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The
Interdiction follows complaints raised by a section of vendors accusing them of
bribery and poor allocation of lockups.
Jimmy
Muhumuza, a vendor says he had two shops before the reconstruction of the
market but during the allocation, he was dropped from the list and not given
any lockup.
Emilly
Musiime another vendor says her stall number 12 was given to another person
because she refused to pay the 100,000 shillings she was asked to pay.
Musiime says
the select committee failed their responsibilities and played filthy with the
vendors.
Lydia
Karungi, the senior Programme officer Ministry of Local Government who is the
chairperson of the verification committee says they zoned the market depending
on the MATTIP guidelines noting that the complaining vendors' are objecting to
the way the market was zoned.
She says
they are doing a re-allocation.
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our data validation.”//
She says the
other group of vendors complaining are those that have been in the market in
the last five years and are renting lockups and stalls but have no memorandum
of understanding between them and the ministry.
Runyankole
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She says
they managed to allocate over 717 vendors and are still data validating to
fully allocate all the vendors.
Muhammed
Nyombi, the chairperson of the Vendors Association says he is fine with the
investigations and his leaderships’ suspension from operations.
He says
vendors have a right to a free and fair process in the allocation after almost
five years of suffering at Independence park.
The 21
Billion shillings market that sits on an acre of land, was constructed by the
government under the Markets and Agricultural Trade Improvement Programme
(MATIP) with support from the African Development Bank (ADB) and is expected to
accommodate over 1000 vendors.