Mbale housing project in balance after injunction

The conflict between Mbale Municipal Council and Maluku Development Association over a housing project has taken a new twist after court slapped an interim injunction on it.

Maluku Development Association that has already sued the municipal council over alleged abuse of authority, wants the council to stay out of the issue until these application is disposed off.

The project
The Shs1.8 billion project was started by the government in 1997 with funding from Denmark. Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) is the implementing agency. Under the project, a housing estate for the poor was built at Maluku slum in Mbale.

But after the project grew from originally 118 houses to 512 with a running capital of Shs300 million, the municipal council locked up the offices of the project, demanded for land titles and ground rent from the beneficiaries. It also demanded that the project be given to the municipal local government for management.

The interim order accessed by Daily Monitor wants the Attorney General, the respondents, their officials and agents to stop occupying the applicant’s offices.

Court order
“An order is hereby issued against respondents to vacate the applicant’s offices that they occupied unlawfully until the disposal of miscellaneous application No. 140/2009. And an order is hereby also issued barring the Attorney General from being drawn into the issues that would tantamount to contempt of court,” reads the interim order dated December 7.

The association’s lawyer said locking the organisation’s office by the Acting Mayor, Ms Jamirah Nareba, and demand by the council that titles be handed over to them was illegal, unfounded and an attempt to defraud the poor who were given the land by government.

The lawyer said when ADRA was phasing out in August 2000, it trained people under its group to take over the project, that gave them independence from the municipal council and the Ministry of Works, adding that there was no clause that said the municipal council would take over the project.

However, the town clerk Mr Nobert Turyahikayo, said the handover report indicates that ADRA handed over the project to the municipality local government as one of the stakeholder to safeguard people’s money and land titles that are now in Bank of Baroda.