Asians property board faces probe over land allocation

More than 800 tenants in Jinja Town want the Justice Catherine Bamugemereire-led Commission of Inquiry into Land Matters to probe activities of the Departed Asians’ Property Custodian Board (DAPCB).
Mr Abbey Mwase, the chairman of the tenants who occupy about 200 plots of land, accuses Mr William George Bizibu, the DAPCB executive secretary, of allocating Plots 41, 43 Lubas Road and Plot 9, Iganga Road to non-sitting tenants.

Mr Mwase manages Plot 41 on behalf of DACBP with eight others.
Muhammad Hassan Tabu, a businessman, manages Plot 43 with Robert Kitimba and nine others valued at Shs57m, while Ms Rebecca Bagonza, a social worker with Women Rights Initiative in Jinja, manages Plot 9, valued at Shs30m.

In his March 28 letter to the Iganga Road Village chairman, Mr Geoffrey Mwase, Mr Bizibu said: “In fulfilment of the provision of the law, DAPCB at its 12th meeting on December 12, 2017, resolved that Plot 9 Iganga Road be sold by private treaty to Caroline Ntono who was our tenant by then.”
On May 4, 2018, Ms Ntono, acting through her lawyers, M/S Wafula and Company Advocates, notified all tenants on Plot 9 Iganga Road to vacate the property, claiming ‘the house you occupy has already been sold and being a condemned house, our client desires to demolish it anytime from the date hereto set . . .”

Mr Mwase, the LCI chairman, had in a February 8, 2016 letter to DAPCB, introduced and recommended Ms Bagonza and four others as “sitting tenants who have lived at the property since 1982”.
Ms Bagonza considers Ms Ntono’s acquisition of the said plot, “irregular and that she must be investigated”.
“An official I only remember as Waiswa came to verify sitting tenants on this plot. Did he produce his report to the (DAPCB) board; was the board guided by his report in deciding who to give the property since both of us had applied for this property?” Ms Bagonza asked.

Adding: “What is the criterion when giving out property? Ms Ntono has never stayed here and I want DAPCB to challenge me on this. I logged in and applied formally, why haven’t they written to us formally? Why consider giving property to somebody who has never stayed there?” Mr Mwase, the tenants’ chairman, is further convinced that officials from the ministry of Lands are furnishing DAPCB officials with original plans of the buildings, which valuers are allegedly irregularly considering to cost property, which he wants Justice Bamugemereire to address his concerns.
Justice Bamugemereire is currently investigating Mr Bizibu for the award of Perryman Gardens to Amobet Investments Limited.

“I appeal to Justice Catherine Bamugemereire to summon Mr Bizibu and ask him why he is selling property or carrying out land transactions from Kampala without dispatching a valuer here [to Jinja]. And if valuation is being done, where is it being done and by who?” I also want him to explain what he has done with all the applications for tenancy agreements,” Mr Mwase said.
“Mr Bizibu has gone ahead to secretly sell houses without tenants’ knowledge and without any input of a chief valuer. All we see are people threatening us while others come in good-will,” Mr Mwase claimed in an interview with Daily Monitor last week.

Mr Bizibu speaks out
When contacted last Wednesday, Mr Bizibu said: “These are very serious allegations. I took over this office last year and I got most of those valuations on file and they are subject to the chief government valuer.”
On the tenants’ allegations that no valuer has visited the said properties in Jinja, he said: “That is subject to investigation. That can be handled but there must be a system of how to handle it.”
Explaining why people who applied for tenancy agreements or plot allocations five years ago haven’t been responded to and why proxy claimants are being considered, Mr Bizibu said he will crosscheck.
Mr Denis Obbo, the spokesperson of Lands ministry, said no valuation can take place if a written instruction has not been received to value a property.

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