Gomba leaders fail to secure land titles for public facilities
Kanoni Church of Uganda Primary School in Gomba District .This is one of the public facilities whose land is being encroached on due to lack of a title. PHOTO | BRIAN ADAMS KESIIME
What you need to know:
- According to Uganda Population and Housing Census 2014, Gomba District had a population of 159,922 people, and 24,419 are located 5km away from the nearest primary and secondary schools.
Leaders in Gomba District have failed to secure land titles for public facilities in the last three years, citing lack of funds.
The securing of titles was intended to deter illegal squatters occupying public land.
Just like other districts, many landlords in Gomba donated land where schools and health centres were erected, but ownership of such pieces of land has not been formalised over the years.
Some of the public facilities whose land has already been encroached on include Kyaayi Seed Secondary School, Kanoni Health Centre, Buyaya Health Centre, and Mamba Health Centre.
No progress
Mr Saleh Senyonjo, the district information officer, said as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the district failed to raise funds to secure the land tiles.
He said in the last three years, they have only managed to get a land title for the district headquarters.
“We had a meeting with the district authorities to get land titles for all our health centres and schools. With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, we failed to raise revenue which could facilitate the exercise,” Mr Senyonjo said at the weekend.
Mr Geoffrey Kalyango, the district education officer, said Gomba has a total of 91 primary schools and 19 health centres but besides Kisozi Health Centre III in Maddu Sub-county, the remaining facilities do not have land tittles.
“ The number of encroachers is increasing by the day and it might be hard for the district to evict them,” he said.
He added: “Many people who donated that land to government made verbal donations and the leaders then didn’t bother to secure land titles. This has given a chance to unscrupulous family members to come up claiming they own part of the land because their fore fathers didn’t put it in writing.”
Mr Kalyango said each department at the district would have secured its own land titles if they had defined sources of revenue.
“ For instance in our department, we get conditional grants and it is difficult to divert some funds for this particular arrangement [of securing land titles],” he said.
