Court sets date for case against custodian board
Mr George William Bizibu, the executive secretary of the Departed Asians Property Custodian Board, appears before Parliament on July 16, 2019. PHOTO / ALEX ESAGALA
What you need to know:
- The families say the properties belonged to their relatives who were expelled by former president Idi Amin.
Court has set October 26, 2021 for the hearing of a property case pitting 24 families of Asian origin against the Departed Asians Property Custodian Board.
The families on October 12 applied for a permanent injunction on properties found on Plot 98-104 Kampala Road in Nakivubo, which they claim had been fraudulently reallocated to another person.
The families say the properties belonged to their relatives who were expelled by former president Idi Amin.
On September 28, the commissioner of land registration at the Ministry of Lands, Mr John Karuhanga, wrote to Prof Syed Abidi, a representative of the families, informing him that the title issued by the Uganda Land Board comprising LRV 3894 Folio 8 was in error and should, therefore, be cancelled.
According to the tenants of the properties, they came to learn about the reallocation of the property to another person when the commissioner of land registration at the Ministry of Lands put a notice in the Uganda Gazette on August 13, 2021, indicating that he intended to issue a special certificate of the plot, which is lost.
But the affected families under their umbrella associations, Parkview Ltd and Bharat Properties Ltd, wrote back, saying they had the land title to the properties and it had never been lost.
Documents seen by this newspaper indicate that the properties had already been allocated to someone else, according to a May 19, 2021, letter.
This means that the notice of the Ministry of Lands came after the issuance of a special certificate to another person.
This is not the first time this matter is coming up. On August 15, 2019, when the same matter came up, the then government Attorney General, Mr William Byaruhanga, gave a legal opinion to the ministry of Finance indicating that the properties had already been repossessed to the original tenants and was not meant to be given to any other person.
“It is, therefore, my opinion that the property has been repossessed under the Expropriated Properties Act by the issuance of the repossession certificate by the minister is not subject to allocation or interference by Custodian Board and MoF (Ministry of Finance),” Mr Byaruhanga said.
