Tenant Bill divides landlords, traders

KAMPALA. Landlords in Uganda have asked Parliament to reject the Landlord-Tenant Bill, 2018, saying it is fake, biased and intended to weaken real estate business in the country.

But the proposed law has been well received by traders who are the prime tenants for many of the commercial rentals in Kampala.
Mr Godfrey Kirumira, the chairperson of Uganda Developers Association, yesterday told Daily Monitor in an interview that the proposed law does not favour landlords.

However, his views were quickly contradicted by Kampala City Traders Association (KACITA) spokesperson Issa Ssekitto who said the Bill has been long overdue and needed to be quickly expedited to save tenants from being harassed by landlords.
The government too, dismissed as premature the fears of landlords, saying the Bill has not yet been tabled in Parliament.

Cabinet on April 9, during a meeting chaired by President Museveni at State House Entebbe approved the Bill, with core objectives of defining the duties and responsibilities of landlords and tenants.

Objectives
The Bill that is expected to be tabled in the first week of May, seeks to promote access to adequate housing and other rentable premises as well as create a mechanism for proper functioning of rental market for both residential and commercial premises. It also seeks to bar landlords from charging rent in foreign currency as it has been the case for some of the buildings in Kampala.

But Mr Kirumira said landlords have not been involved in the process leading to the drafting of the Bill.

“The President and Parliament should understand the repercussions of this Bill if passed into law. It is a fake Bill and it is one-sided since we were not involved at all,” Mr Kirumira said.

Another city landlord, Mr Hamis Kiggundu, the proprietor of Ham Shopping Centre at Nakivuvu, questioned the role of politics in the matters of development, especially in the country’s construction industry.
“It is not possible for that Bill to be implemented. We don’t even need to discuss this because the determinant factor for rent is automatic from the prevailing circumstances,” Mr Kiggundu said.

However, Mr Ssekitto said KACITA has been pushing for the law for more than five years now because it would address most of the problems the traders (tenants) have been facing from landlords.

“The Bill has been long overdue because the existing laws have been biased and are old. All those harassments the tenants have been getting from landlords will be no more because it is not supposed to be mandatory for anybody to pay [rent] in dollars,” Mr Ssekitto said.
But a business lawyer in Kampala, Mr Muzamiru Kibeedi, said the Bill will make landlords fail to secure “reasonable” loans for real estates’ development.

He said the rent control in the proposed law will deprive landlords from enjoying the principle of equal treatment that is provided for in the Constitution because the Bill does not provide for government control on the prices of goods and merchandise being sold in those rented premises.

“The real estate is central to the health of our economy. Commercial banks and other financial institutions heavily rely on it to secure loans they lend to their customers for development. And historically, it has been one of the most dependable for those seeking financial security, especially during their old age. As such, disrupting it at the alter of political expediency is a choice the next generation will never excuse us (for),” Mr Kibeedi said.
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