Kalungu farmers demand Shs800m from investors over destroyed crops

KALUNGU. Crop farmers at Lutente Village, Lukaya Town Council in Kalungu District, are demanding more than Shs800m in compensation after their crops were submerged.

The affected farmers said the destruction was a result of a new access road which some Chinese investors created to ease access to their rice fields in the vast Lwera wetland.

“Our gardens are adjacent to the new access road heading to the rice fields owned by Chinese investors.Since they [Chinese] didn’t create a proper drainage system, whenever it rains, our gardens get flooded,” Ms Teopista Nakintu, a farmer, said in an interview on Tuesday.

She said they cultivated in the gardens since 2014 and had not experienced such a problem.
Ms Nakintu said she had more than 17 acres of tomatoes and eight acres of green pepper.
But she said their gardens started getting submerged in water at the beginning of December.

To investors
Mr Farouk Buyondo, the chairperson of Lutente Village, urged the Chinese investors to install culverts and save the farmers from making losses.
“We need the road but the investors should put concrete pipe culverts across the road and proper drainage system so that those owning gardens don’t look at the new road as a problem,” he said.

Mr Vincent Kigoye, a farmer, said they tried to reach out to the Chinese investors so that the water is blocked, but they were ignored.
“They [the Chinese investors] kept on saying they were not the ones who caused the floods, as we talk we have registered huge losses amounting to Shs800m and we want them to compensate us,” he said.

Speaking to Daily Monitor, Mr Richard Ssenyonga, the Kalungu District agricultural officer, said he led a team of agriculturalists and district technocrats who visited the affected farmers last December and discovered that seven farmers had their gardens submerged.

“We valued the destroyed crops to be worth Shs330m,’’ he said.
He, however, declined to reveal details of what was resolved after the inspection of the gardens, saying he ought to first get got permission from his boss, the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), Ms Fiida Kyendebaiza.

The investor
Mr Victor Mukasa, who speaks for the Chinese investors, said: “Our engineers informed us that it is not the road that caused flooding in the area. If those people have been practicing farming for some time, they could be aware of the changing climate conditions. The flood water they are talking about, came as a result of climate change and not the road we constructed,” he said, adding: “In fact, they should be thanking us for creating a road for them.”

Lwera swamp

Lwera swamp, which stretches about 20kilometres on Kampala–Masaka highway, is a major water catchment area that connects several rivers and wetlands in Gomba, Mpigi and Kalungu Districts and drains directly into Lake Victoria.
Due to its location, it attracted companies and individuals who are engaging in sand mining, fishing farming and crop growing .
Despite environmentalists warning about ecological disaster as a result destroying major swamps, people have refused to vacate .
Farmers claim the area provides them an easy access to market in South Sudan and other regional markets.
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