Government fails to help mudslide victims

Bulambuli

Relief assistance to mudslide victims in eastern Uganda has delayed and planned relocation of thousands from Mt. Elgon escarpments hangs in balance because government has no money for the purposes, a top government official said yesterday.

Mr Musa Ecweru, the junior Disaster minister, said he is yet to present a case before colleagues during today’s Cabinet meeting to secure emergency financing, more than 48 hours after the disaster struck in Bulambuli District. “We did not anticipate this (mudslide); in fact we do not have money, he said. “The good thing is that Cabinet is flexible and we are working our way around to get some money.” The Disaster Preparedness ministry is supposed to take up one per cent of the national budget but Finance has never allocated it that cash, forcing line officials to scratch from other votes.

Mr Ecweru said technocrats in his office were by yesterday still calculating the amount of money required to handle the Bulambuli disaster even as Maj. Gen. Julius Oketta, the emergency coordinator in the Office of the Prime Minister, was dispatched there virtually empty-handed to face nervous survivors.

Gen. Oketta on arrival announced that government would not establish ad hoc camps for displaced persons – as it did last year following the March 1 Bududa mudslides - and advised families settled on mountain slopes likely to collapse, to immediately take refuge with friends or relatives in lowlands. After an on-the-spot assessment, he directed Bulambuli local government leaders to register all affected families and “help them find relatives to stay with them as we provide food for them until a lasting solution is sought by government”.

The government plan, although looking good on paper, appeared far from deliverable partly because it provided no other detail of what assistance would be offered and there is no budget or timeline for implementation of the proposal.

The likelihood of another imminent avalanche dawned on residents after a Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) official reported observing huge cracks on parts of Mt Elgon and hearing overnight ominous noises of what appeared to be rocks separating.

Contrasting figures
Mt. Elgon Area Conservation Manager Adonia Bintorwa, whose interest is to see encroachers leave as soon as possible, told this newspaper random cultivation and construction by settlers had depleted vegetation cover, exposing the place to slides. He said: “The people are cutting trees without planting news ones. They have also encroached on the forest. The villagers have cultivated crops on Mt. Elgon slopes up to 200m above the sea level.”

Some 30 people died in Bulambuli’s twin mudslides on Monday, according to minister Ecweru. A child was smashed dead by another unreported avalanche in Chema Sub-county of neighbouring Kapchorwa District. The government said 26 bodies had been retrieved and the search is on for four other corpses swept downstream when nearby Biritanyi River burst its bank. “We gave coffins for the bodies and directed that they should be accorded decent burial,” Mr Ecweru said by telephone last evening.

Local officials, among them Bulambuli District chairman Simon Wananzofu, and Mr Jacob Nasami, the chairman of the battered Kimuli village, however, maintain the mudslides killed up to 43 residents.

Uganda Red Cross spokesperson Catherine Ntabadde sent an update yesterday indicating 27 people perished; 16 in Sisiyi and 11 in Buluganya sub-counties. The disparity in fatality figures highlights the hazards of imprecise official demographic statistics and this in part is because local council officials do not register people living in their neighbourhoods. Thus when disasters strike - as in this case - most accounts about victims is premised on assumptions.

Students stare at uncertainty
The updated Red Cross report shows that some 127,571 people in 26,115 households have been affected by disaster in Bulambuli, one of the newest and poorest districts. Bunambutye, Bwikhonge, Nabbongo, Muyembe, Bulambuli TC, Simu, Bukhalu, Bukise, Sironko TC are the most battered areas. There is growing concern over sanitation, particularly in Mabono parish, in the wake of submerged pit-latrines. Food supplies are running low as runoffs have destroyed substantial farmlands.

Excavators would be required to open blocked roads, cutting off entire villages, and without urgent rehabilitation, it might be impossible for students of Buluganya SS and Buluganya, Sooti, Budyeki nursery school pupils to resume studies when schools re-open for Third Term next week.