Gulu starts relocating offices to new district headquarters

Gulu District has embarked on relocating its offices from Gulu City to the new administrative headquarters at Awach Town Board, some 45km from Gulu City.

This is despite the fact that they do not have enough structures at the new site to accommodate the offices.

To facilitate a complete relocation, the district now needs up to Sh8 billion to put up new administrative buildings, Mr Christopher Opiyo Ateker, the district chairperson, said on Monday.

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The district embarked on plans to relocate its headquarters to Awach Town Council in 2020 on a 104-acre piece of land donated by the community. This was shortly after the then Gulu Municipality attained city status.

In an interview, Mr Opiyo explained that the move followed current conflicts between the district and the Gulu City Council authorities over the ownership of properties that belonged to the district before the former municipality attained a city status last year.

“Once Gulu elevated from municipality to city status, the city political and technical leadership, including staff, started seeing us as enemies and they started intimidating us and our staff to vacate the office blocks,” he said.

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Nevertheless, he insisted that the administration blocks within Gulu City remain the property of the district.

“As the mother district, we sacrificed many assets, including sub-counties (Laliya, Unyama) and revenue points, to the city, but administration blocks and land remain ours until the government reverses that position,” Mr Opiyo added.

He also stated that they are relocating their offices to bring services closer to the people.
“We have fully relocated the cold-chain office, and accountants; the community-based services are now operating from Burcoro, including my office.”

Mr Opiyo said they are now in the search for Shs8 billion to start the construction of permanent district headquarters.

“Last week we were at Local Government ministry and we told them that we should be given a relocation fund, not start-up capital,” the district chairperson said.

Mr Balington P’ongwec, the district secretary for health and community services, said they are working to open all the access roads leading to the district headquarters as they try to set up some buildings.