Forest ward in Gulu town is not fit for settlement
While Forest Ward is located in Gulu town, it is full of grass thatched house because it is in a wetland and no one is allowed to build a permanent structure in the area. Photo Stephen Okello
GULU- While people continue flocking Forest Ward in Gulu Town, it sits on National Forest Authority (NFA) land and no one is allowed to construct a permanent structure on the land.
When the two decades Lords’ Resistance Army (LRA) war broke in northern Uganda, many families left their villages for urban centres where they would get better security. Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps were created to provide security and other slums in major towns became homes to the victims.
How it became a camp
Forest Ward as popularly known to many people in Acholi sub-region was one of the places occupied during the LRA war although it was never one of the IDP camps.
The area developed as a result of the LRA insurgency in 2008 as people fled from their village to Gulu town looking for places with better security and access to other social services such as education, health and markets.
Though situated in the middle of Gulu town in Laroo division, where one would expect to find commercial buildings, it is only packed with grass thatched huts because it is located in the National Forest Authority (NFA) land and people were prohibited from building any permanent structures in the area.
Since it is close to a Lagoon, the area has a lot of manholes of different sewerage lines that burst any time and put the health of the people in the area at high risk as they survive on open water.
Joyce Oryem, the area LC1 chairperson and resident said, she has been living there since 1990 because she was employed with NFA as a nursery bed attendant.
History
Oryem says when she joined in 1990, the area was bushy and redundant, before NFA permitted its employees to temporally settle on that piece of land.
“National Forestry Authority instructed us not to put any permanent structures on this land because we are temporally living here,” Oryem explains. She adds that when LRA intensified their operation in rural areas in northern Uganda in 1998, people started fleeing the village to come and take refuge in town,
“NFA allowed them to settle here with their relative for security reasons.”
Renting
Oryem says the area remains home to low income earners who live around Gulu town. Renting a house ranges from Shs10, 000 and Shs20,000.
Challenge
Rose Ayoo, a resident and a nurse, who owns a drug shop in the area says access to clean water is the major problem faced by residents in Forest Ward as they depend on an open well that is mixed up with running water which flows in the stream.
She adds that poor sanitation remains a challenge to the residents because the village is situated close to a Lagoon, that over flows when it rains thus posing a high risk of a typhoid epidemic.
Security
Security threat is another challenge because most the youths in the area spend their time drinking spirits and local brew as most of them are unemployed but spend most of their time in betting casinos and slot machines .
“Burglary is very high in the area with three to five burglary cases being reported everyday despite the interventions from police and other security, ” Say Rose Ayoo a resident and a Nurse who owns a drug shop.
