Buganda Road flats sale stalls

Taxis drive past Buganda Road Flats in Kampala on Monday PHOTO BY STEPHEN WANDERA

What you need to know:

For the people. The President had directed that sitting tenants be given priority to buy the flats.

KAMPALA. National Housing and Construction Corporation (NHCC) is reluctant to implement a directive by President Museveni to sell off Buganda Road flats to sitting tenants at Shs51 million per apartment.
President Museveni, in a letter to the Finance minister, ordered that the more than 90-sitting tenants on the eight blocks must not be harassed with eviction notices but instead be given priority of buying out their occupancy.
Mr Museveni’s letter dated September 30, 2014, to the then Minister of Finance, Ms Maria Kiwanuka, was in response to a petition he had received from the tenants. In the petition, the tenants had complained about unfair treatment by NHCC.
“I directed, in my letter dated April 13, 2010 that the sitting tenants be offered an opportunity to purchase these flats. In a recent petition dated July 7, 2014, I was surprised to learn that the company had not only failed to implement my directive but had also rejected the sale price of Shs51 million as I had directed and was also threatening to evict the tenants,” the President wrote.
He continued: “These apartments are government property and almost all the sitting tenants, who make up more than 150 families are Ugandans who are mainly retired or close to retiring civil servants. It would therefore be a gross act of discrimination to treat them differently from tenants in similar apartments also managed by the same company. There is no basis for price hikes since it is the company which protracted the process of sale from 2005.”
However, when contacted on Monday, the acting NHCC chief executive officer, Mr Parity Twinomujuni, said the delay to sell the flats is because the company is now owned by two governments as shareholders; Uganda and Libya.
“We have contacted the ministry of Finance on how to compensate the other shareholder, if one shareholder has accepted to sell at a loss,” Mr Twinomujuni said. “It is not that we have refused but we are looking for an amicable way to settle the issue,” he added.
The President, in the letter, a copy of which Daily Monitor has seen, also directed that threats of eviction of tenants from flats be stopped immediately.
The Buganda Road Flats sitting tenants leader, Mr Tom Ongeso, said the President’s letter came as a relief but noted that little has been done on its implementation.
“We received the executive directive from His Excellence the President but it is now months down the road nothing has been done,” Mr Ongeso said.
In August 2005, NHCC offered the flats for sale at Shs51 m to the tenants, who then started renovating some of the houses with the hope that they would retain them. However, NHCC reportedly made a decision to sell the flats to a single investor- the Libyan government.
The tenants say the move to push the price beyond their ability to pay, was to find a way of evicting them as rent defaulters.
The government owns 51 per cent of NHCC while the Libyan government owns 49 per cent.

The numbers

Shs51m
Amount that the President proposes each apartment to be sold at.