KCCA halts fees on all city markets, buildings

Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago yesterday said his committee resolved to waive fees and other charges in all markets and facilities under Kampala Capital City Authority for March and April in order to help the traders cope with the growing Covid-19 pandemic.

“As a temporary measure, we have suspended collection of rent from our facilities such as markets, taxi parks [and] from all these other facilities to give them [traders] leeway to build their own capacities,” Mr Lukwago told journalists during the inspection of Usafi Market and taxi parks in Kampala yesterday.

He was accompanied by the deputy Lord Mayor, Ms Sarah Kanyike, and councillors. Mr Lukwago said the tax holiday was meant to allow traders use the money to acquire the key requirements such as soap, clean water, sanitisers, face masks and others which are needed to guard against the spread of coronavirus.

Mr Lukwago said KCCA are unable to provide the needed requirements in major public areas.

“These people don’t have the screening facilities and that is the biggest challenge and as KCCA, we also don’t have the required funds to buy these [thermometer] guns [and other facilities]. So we have resolved that these people collect from among themselves what they would have remitted to KCCA as monthly rent and buy those guns [and other supplies],” Mr Lukwago said.

He added: “Those [thermometer guns] are expensive. One unit goes [for] around Shs100,000. So they [traders] can’t afford all of them. So what we have resolved [is that] we suspend rent and we build the capacity for them to proceed and buy them.”

The Lord Mayor said the proposal to exempt traders from rent will be presented to KCCA Council for approval. He hopes this will be done by close of this month.

“We shall ratify it [decision] because it is required in the process [and] we shall ratify it in the Council sitting of 30th of this month. We shall take the appropriate measures to ensure that decision is ratified but we want to implement it immediately,” Mr Lukwago said.

In addition to the above, Mr Lukwago said KCCA created a taskforce to implement the stipulated guidelines in the fight against COVID-19 as issued by President Museveni and Ministry of Health and also empower communities to guard against the virus.

“For us [KCCA], we could not wait for anything to get into the city because it is the commercial hub [of the country and it is the gateway to the nation. We said we can’t wait, Let’s put in place this necessary committee,” Mr Lukwago said.
He also said the ‘Kampala COVID-19 Taskforce’ will work under supervision of KCCA.

In addition to the standard operating procedures of the Ministry of Health and the guidelines by the President, KCCA moved to enforce more measures to be followed by the business communities in the public facilities such as markets, shopping malls and arcades.

[email protected]