Pitch - Dark: Masaka’s 10 years in darkness

Masaka Town is vibrant during day but it plunges into darkness at night because of the absence of functioning street lights. Photo by Michael J Ssali

What you need to know:

Almost all cities have some dark alleys, but for Masaka, the whole city is plunged into darkness whenever the sun goes down. Street lights have not been on for a decade and some put the blame on high electricity bills that the municipality’s budget couldn’t meet while others blame vandals.

Mustapha Kiggundu, 35, is a resident and shop keeper in Masaka Town. For the five years he has stayed and worked in the town, he has not seen street lights on at any moment. “I have never seen those lights on. The only light available in town at night is provided by security lights of privately owned buildings,” he says.
“On some days, however, when the proprietors of the buildings fail to pay their electricity bills on time, the electricity gets disconnected, which leads to more darkness in the town. It appears normal because I have never seen anyone complaining,” Kiggundu adds.

Masaka Town has not had street lights for more than 10 years and most of the town is in total darkness at night, which makes it risky for people to walk without trusted company.
Southern Region police spokesperson, Noah Sserunjogi, describes the situation as a security risk and names some streets like Buddu Street and Hobart Street as particularly prone to criminal activities such as burglary and drug abuse. The fact that there are no street lights in these areas, Sserunjogi says, presents a potent security threat -which needs urgent attention.

“We are constantly struggling to drive away drug smoking gangs from the streets and the absence of street lights and security lights on the buildings has not made it any easier,” he says.
Mr Gerald Ssemwogerere, a former mayor Masaka Municipality, attributes the absence of street lights to imprudent handling of funds on the part of the town’s leadership. “When I was mayor in the 1990s, we made sure there were street lights on all the streets and public roads of Masaka Municipality,” he says . “It is just a question of good financial management.”

Mayoral aspirant William Shakespeare Kalumba, who is also the regional agent for Bell beer, attributes the problem to “people who own no property in Masaka being elected to positions of leadership.” “Such people don’t have anything to lose, so they don’t care. He has streetlights among the key programmes he intends to implement if he is elected mayor in the next elections. But having working streetlights is a promise by nearly all the other aspirants to the different positions of leadership in the municipality including the current mayor himself, Godfrey Kayemba Afaayo, who told Daily Monitor that in the next few months there will be streetlights all along Yellow Knife Road, Hobart Street, Katwe Road, and in all the municipal council markets.
The deputy town clerk, Kiwanuka Gwavu, however, seemed to have the best explanation for the absence of street lights in Masaka municipality for the last 10 years. “Some of the reasons are rooted in the town’s sad history,” he explains.

“Remember that in the distant past Masaka municipality was well lit and well planned. Back then it did not include the divisions of Kimaanya/Kyabakuza, and Nyendo/Ssenyange. It was only in 1968 that they became extensions of the Municipality and they came along with their issues of absence of street lights and proper urban planning. Then in 1971 Idi Amin took over power which in itself disrupted many of the town’s development programmes. The war that resulted in Idd Amin’s overthrow in 1979 left Masaka Town thoroughly looted and without any standing street light poles. It was not until 1986 that our country achieved some stability and introduced the decentralisation process, which allocated various responsibilities to municipalities and district local councils. Among the responsibilities allocated to Masaka municipality was provision of street lighting.”

He went on to explain, however, some of the responsibilities allocated to Masaka municipality were never really matched to the council’s revenue collection. He revealed that most of the money initially used in the 1990s to replace the looted street lights was obtained from the sale of departed Asians’ property. “But with time, the municipality failed to pay the monthly electricity bills. Some monthly bills were as high as Shs16m yet our revenue collection was never that high. So we failed to sustain the payments and the lights went off.”
Gwavu went on to reveal that in 2003, the municipality resolved to restore the street lights, using energy saving florescent tubes. There were, however, too many power outages which made it easy for thieves to steal the florescent tubes. The power bills continued to be too high and within less than a year the municipality gave up on the street lights project.

“As I speak now, however, the government with support from the World Bank is implementing the Electricity Sector Development Project (ESDP). The project will facilitate improvements in power supply to the South-Western region of Uganda by construction of the Kawanda-Masaka 220 KV power transmission line. Among other things the project will support several social development activities being initiated by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development. These include street and market lighting in Masaka Municipality, electrification of peri-urban areas along the transmission line corridor. So we expect the streets and markets to be well lit in the next few months. This means that market vendors will have more working hours and the people who work in offices will be expected to have enough time to purchase food and other items from the markets, ” says Gwavu.
With all politicians promising street lights, if elected come next year, the hope of the residents is that they will implement their manifestos, lest it comes up as an issue again in the 2021 elections.

Masaka as a town

Initially, Masaka was part of the greater Bunyoro Kingdom, before it fell to Buganda. It derives its name from a Kinyoro word meaning Sorghum. It is made up of eleven streets and three divisions namely; Katwe-Butego, Kimanya- Kyabakuza and Nyendo-Ssenyange divisions. The municipality has a resident population of 251,000, compared to 296,000 who work in the town during day. Authorities have for long been pushing for the town to attain a city status, but challenges like constant power outages and poor garbage disposal could have been a hindrance to attaining city status.

Currently, Uganda has 204 urban centres (one city, 22 municipalities and 174 town councils) with a total urban population of six million persons. However, the new proposed municipalities yet to be approved by Parliament are likely to increase the number to 33 municipalities.