UNRA to pull down houses in roadway
Wrong location. Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) is set to start demolishing structures such as this building in Bukoto, Kyebando, a city suburb, that encroach on the road reserve. PHOTO BY ABUBAKER LUBOWA.
What you need to know:
Deadline. Unra says a deadline it issued to encroachers to leave voluntarily expires today and will not be extended
KAMPALA.
The government will soon start demolishing structures, including markets and institutional buildings, erected within gazatted road reserves along national roads.
Billed as an operation to de-congest the city, Uganda National Roads Authority (Unra) said a deadline it issued to encroachers to leave voluntarily expires today and will not be extended.
“We anticipate that this exercise will help decongest the roads and reduce the heavy traffic pains that the users of roads have encountered,” Unra executive director Allen Kagina said in a statement yesterday.
The Roads Authority has reportedly briefed President Museveni and police, respectively, about the upcoming exercise in order to stave off a possible political backlash and guarantee the execution is incident-free.
Mr Frank Mwesigwa, the Kampala Metropolitan Police commander, confirmed that they had been notified and said they are awaiting a required detailed report about the demolition plan to guide police deployment.
According to Unra’s statement, the exercise will start from Kibuye round-about on the Kampala-Entebbe highway and progress toward Entebbe town.
Structures on road reserves are illegal and the encroachers will not be compensated, officials said.
A road reserve, according to the colonial-era Road Act 1949, is an “area bounded by imaginary lines parallel to and distant not more than 50 feet (about 16 metres) from the centre line of any road”.
Section 5 of the said Act mandates the Roads Authority to “remove interferences” such as unauthorised building, plants/crops, access lanes, cattle paths and bicycle tracks from the roads which technically includes the carriageway, separators (island), shoulders, drainage channels, side-walks and road reserves.
Individuals addressed
“This is, therefore, to advise all individuals who have structures or unauthorised activities of any form in the road reserves anywhere along the national roads to vacate before demolitions and forceful evictions commence,” Ms Kagina noted in yesterday’s statement.
If any encroacher defies official orders to pull down illegal structures erected on road reserves, the Roads Authority can raze it or the encroacher, upon conviction by court, is liable to a fine not exceeding Shs1,000.
Road reserves, among other things, are used for piping or conveying utilities, expanding the carriageway or planting trees to beautify the road.
Unra says it has, through random inspections, established that many individuals have encroached on the national road reserves in contravention of the law. “In some instances the encroachment has been extended to the walkways, road shoulders and the road carriageway itself thereby posing danger to roads users especially, pedestrians,” Ms Kagina noted.
The reaction by affected property owners has varied from compliance to consternation, anxiety and, in some cases, outright anger and protest.
This newspaper understands that up to 55 structures will be pulled down between Kibuye Round-about and Najjanankumbi on Entebbe highway based on an ongoing inventory of affected properties.
The next phase of the registration of such illegal developments will cover Kajjansi Trading Centre, where the under-construction Entebbe expressway intersects with the current Entebbe highway, and proceed to the airport.
After the demolitions on Kampala-Entebbe highway, Unra plans to shift the phased exercise on outbound city routes to Jinja, Masaka, Mityana, Hoima and Bombo.
Prior sensitisation
Unra’s head of corporate affairs Mark Ssali said besides the two weeks’ notice served to all encroachers on January 31, 2017, “our directorate of road infrastructure has been on the roads for the past one year engaging and sensitising people”.
“So, we think we have reached out enough and given everyone time,” he said.
Illegal structures
This newspaper understands that up to 55 structures will be pulled down between Kibuye round-about and Najjanankumbi on Entebbe road based on an ongoing inventory of affected properties. The next phase of the registration of such illegal developments will cover Kajjansi Trading Centre, where the under-construction Entebbe-Kampala Expressway intersects with the current Entebbe road.
