Harrowing tales of living in a railway reserve

In 2014, Mr Julius Behakanira, a resident of Kanyogoga Village, Wabigalo Parish in Makindye Division, Kampala, was sleeping when someone relentlessly knocked at his door.
“Hurry! Remove your belongings. Officers from KCCA [Kampala Capital City Authority], [Uganda] Railways [Corporation] and police are demolishing houses,” the voice at the other end told him.

Mr Behakanira, like hundreds other residents staying in the railway reserve, were caught off-guard. The operation was being conducted before 5am on July 28, 2014, which was Eid al-Fitr, a public holiday.
The operation was simultaneously carried out in Namuwongo, Banda, Nakawa, Ndeeba, Katwe and Nalukolongo townships.

Tears of distraught residents followed. Dramatic scenes of young children as five years carrying belongings they salvaged from ruins graced the television stations that day.
Most of those evicted had just established their shacks within 30 metres of both sides of the railway reserve after they were evicted from Nakawa estates in 2011. Unlike that group, Mr Behakanira had been sold a plot in the reserve by officials of the Uganda Railways Corporation.

Luckily, before the graders could reach Mr Behakanira’s home, the operation was called off.
An association dubbed ‘Twegate Women Group’ secured a court order the next day that stopped the eviction.
Nevertheless, lives of many people in the railway reserve have never been the same.
“It is something that still haunts me every day I go to bed,” Mr Behakanira says.

Encroachment
The highly-encroached railway reserve stretches more than 20kms in Kampala and Wakiso districts. Encroached railway reserves include Kireka, Banda, Nakawa, Namuwongo, Nakawa, Ndeeba, Nalukolongo and Katwe.
When the railway services collapsed in early 1990s, the URC abdicated its duties to protect the reserves.
Some reserves were sold off by URC officials legally and illegally to private individuals and companies.

Local Council authorities too took advantage of URC administrative weaknesses and signed off land transfer agreements for a fee, parcelling out plots in the reserves to unsuspecting buyers. The population in the reserve increased when government evicted people from its houses in Nakawa. Most of those evicted were too poor to rent in private estates so they erected makeshifts in the reserves. They have stayed there since.
Mr Behakanira claims that some of his colleagues who constructed permanent structures sought authorisation from URC engineers and even paid them between Shs1m to Shs10m.

Mr Sande Masengere, a local leader in Kanyongoga Village that has a population of around 5,000 residents in the railway reserve, says they are both in social and economic limbo.
“Many residents in the railway reserve are trapped. All their investments are in those shacks you see. They have no money to rent if they are evicted. They can’t construct better houses because they are the urban poor,” Mr Masengere says.
“Our communities can neither get basic services from government agencies nor non-governmental organisations since both don’t officially recognise them as legal occupants. Even the residents are not committed to development for fear that they may waste their money on projects that may be demolished soon,” he adds.

Mr Masengere says the result has been deterioration in health standards and even security.
“We are in a dilemma. The Uganda National Sewage Corporation had laid water pipes in the area, but when they heard about the threats to evict us, they stopped their operations in the area. Residents now depend on spring water wells that have been tested severally by Kampala Capital City Authority doctors and condemned as contaminated with human faecal matter,” he adds.

Mr Masengere says KCCA officials advised them to buy bottled water for drinking if they were to avoid contracting diseases.
“Those people want to heed to the authorities’ advice but they cannot afford a jerry can of bottled water a day. We just continue drinking spring well water. We are at God’s mercy to protect us from contracting diseases,” he says. The halting of the piped water project meant that residents cannot have flush toilets in their houses and have to depend on pit-latrines.
Many pit-latrines is are shallow because of a low water table since the area is a wetland.

Poor sanitation
The resident say the pit-latrines fill up fast and during the rainy season, some of the feacal matter ends up in water sources, which leads to constant outbreaks of cholera and dysentery.
Mr Masengere says the houses are so congested that residents cannot construct new latrines.
“Families have to depend on public toilets, which were constructed by individuals, and each person must pay per visit. It is the only way of solving the problem of cholera in the area,” he says.

Each toilet user pays Shs200, meaning that a family of five part with Shs1,000 a day.
Many of the people living on the railway reserve such as private security guards, casual workers and vendors earn less than a dollar a day.
The penniless families wait until the cover of darkness and answer nature’s call on the railway line. Some ease themselves in polythene bags during the day and carry the human waste alongside the garbage at night and dump them on the railway tracks.
Mr Yasiin Omar, who has been a local council leader for Muyenga Parish for decades, says during the rainy season, the area experiences flooding.

“All the drainage system from hilly places were channelled to that area. Three children were killed by floods last year,” he says.
Mr Omar says people come to stay in the railway reserve because of lack of a common shared vision among government agencies.
“Everyone is doing his own thing. KCCA is also doing its own projects that are contradicting those of police and the Uganda Railways Corporation,” he says.

“KCCA says the people in the railway reserves are there illegally and they are not entitled to some amenities such as roads and health services but the same authorities go there and collect taxes such as trade licences,” Mr Omar adds.
Mr Peter Kauju, the KCCA director of public affairs, says they are aware of the sanitation challenges faced by communities living within the railway reserves but adds that planning for them is a hard task.

“Those areas are gazetted for utilities not for residences. They are there illegally. They are supposed to be evicted but we are only tied up by the court order,” Mr Kauju says.
“There is a pilot project where we are offering public toilets but it is only in the middle of the city centre. Those areas are not included in the project,” he says.
Despite the differences between the communities and the authorities, there are efforts by the latter to prevent escalation of social problems that spill over to the organised neighbourhoods. Power distributor Umeme was forced to connect houses in the reserves to metred power to curb high incidents of power theft.

The power company had to lure the residents into using power legally by allowing them to use it for free for months. KCCA also now sends garbage trucks twice a week to the area.
Mr Masengere says since KCCA started collecting garbage, incidents of people throwing waste on the railway have reduced. The reserve has become a safe haven for criminals.
Kampala Metropolitan Police deputy spokesperson Luke Owoyesigyire says many residents of the reserves are victims of crime.

“Both petty and violent crimes are high on the reserves. Majority dwellers living in the railway reserves use the tracks to walk to and from work. So criminals target those who use the tracks at night or early in the morning,” Mr Owoyesigyire says.

Many of these criminals, who are also resident in the railway reserves, have widened their scope, targeting motorists who use roads near the reserves. They snatch mobile phones and bags from the cars, especially during traffic jam.
Mr Owoyesigyire says last year, criminals killed a boda boda rider and put his body in a box before pushing it in a culvert on Eighth Street, Industrial Area in the railway reserve.

Crime zone
The suspects expected rain that day so that the flood water would push the body to Nakivubo Channel but it did not rain.
The police suspicion is that the people, who killed the boda boda rider, are from the neighbourhood. The body was dumped just 100 metres from the police booth.
Even police officers fear pursuing the criminals, especially during the night.
Police have established booths nearly every kilometre on the railway reserve to protect the residents.

Mr Owoyesigire says the police are also piloting a new policing strategy called Mayumba Kumi (Neighbourhood Watch) that is based on clusters of residents to protect their area from criminals.
Since the threats of eviction, business along the railway reserves has stagnated.
“I went to my bank where I have been getting loans for year, but this time they were hesitant to give me a loan after indicating that I was staying in Kanyogoga. They said I had to provide more collateral because they were unsure whether I would be able to repay it. All other colleagues are telling me the same experience,” Mr Behakanira says.

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