How charcoal cartels keep beating system

Under the cover of darkness, they effortlessly reached the Industrial Area village in Bardege-Layibi Division in Gulu City. 

Although Omona initially told this publication that he was a motorist who moved into villages to buy charcoal to sell to random customers in the city, we witnessed his charcoal bags being offloaded and ferried into a waiting box-bodied Fuso truck. 

The truck set off for Kampala at midnight. Four months earlier, the same truck was found parked at Lufwa Village, in Mede Parish, Palaro Sub-county.

At that time, six men took turns to carry and load more than 100 bags of charcoal into it. 

Our investigation would finger Robert Asiimwe as the alleged owner of the truck.

We understand that he reportedly runs a charcoal farm at Pokogali Village in Palaro Sub-county. 

Our investigation, which ran from February 2024 to December 2024, uncovered a peculiar pattern of operations applied by dealers such as Mr Asiimwe to evade security operations and checkpoints that are incessantly mounted to stop charcoal trading.

Large sums of money are used to not only compromise security forces but also meticulously station trucks outside security operation zones.

Boda boda cyclists such as Mr Omona, also come in handy in helping dealers evade interception. 

Up close with the dealers

At the same location on Pawel-Patoko road at Coope Village in Patiko Sub-county on different dates (February 23 and November 17), a box-bodied truck registration was recorded loading charcoal from a set of three motorists. 

We estimated that each was carrying between two and three bags per trip. 

Whereas in the neighbourhood of Bungatira Trading Centre, on Patiko-Palaro road, two box-bodied trucks, on May 1 and May 7, 2024, loaded a head of about 620 bags of charcoal from a ‘farm’ run by Brenda Salome, a resident of Kawempe Division in Kampala.

Ms Salome would later admit to dealing in charcoal but hastened to add that she exited the business in August 2024 after incurring a loss when security confiscated her charcoal consignment. 

“The chain,” she said, “is long and it’s hard to sustain it when you don’t run a big capital base.” 

It is also an undertaking couched in luck. Take two Fuso trucks that were intercepted in Gulu City on Jomo Kenyatta Avenue loaded with charcoal.

Although their operators had led soldiers at the Akurukwe Police checkpoint to believe that they were transporting plastic waste from Elegu Town in Amuru for recycling in Kampala by covering the bags with sacks of plastic waste, they soon ran out of luck.

Circumventing the ban

In May 2023, President Museveni issued Executive Order No. 3, in which he, among other things, banned commercial charcoal trade in Karamoja, Teso, Lango, Acholi, and West Nile. 

Mr Museveni reasoned that conclusion showed security forces had masterminded the trade that has turned disastrous to the environment. 

Yet charcoal traders rarely run into speed bumps whilst operating illegally almost over a year later. 

Ms Hawa Nambiro from Luweero District had been in the trade before Covid-19 struck. She described to us how the cartel works. 

“[Security officers] are given money, but some of them do not accept it. [Most dealers use] box-body trucks which are commonly known to carry maize and other produce from [northern] region, and we pass because they know we are farmers in the villages there,” Ms Nambiro disclosed. 

“Every day we [would] tell them that we have carried maize, sesame, groundnuts because we are using this one [truck] which is covered. Unless it is opened, someone cannot see the content inside,” she added.

Another dealer from Kampala who trades charcoal in Jinja City, narrated how they once had to pay between Shs1.8m and Shs2.4m to security officers every time his truck passed through the major checkpoints. 

Speaking on condition of anonymity, our source said: “On the ground in Palaro where I operate, I have deployed four motorcycles that ferry the charcoal from the burning camps (farms) to Bungatira Centre past the army checkpoint because those soldiers in the villages will not allow the truck to pass. On the highway is where the bribing is done.” 

Our source added: “If I pay at Akurukwe, for example, the officers there will tip their colleagues ahead to allow me to pass but I have only to get something small and give those officers ahead some small amount of money for their ‘tea’.”

Win some, lose some

Mr Christopher Oruka, the team leader of Acholi Environmental Conservation Agency (AECA), told Sunday Monitor thus: “It has come to our dismay that some sub-counties are passing by-laws that support these illegalities because they are saying they are getting revenues from it…We have evidence that both elected and appointed leaders are getting money, including the army and the police.”

According to Mr Oruka, the dealers use agents whom they give money to move in advance and compromise security officers. 

“The real dealers don’t give the money themselves, these are agents. The dealers, we discovered, buy motorcycles to use to transport for them the consignment across army checkpoints for a period like one year and the motorcycle becomes theirs. On days that the dealer is not trucking, they operate as bod aboda,” he said. 

According to the AECA team leader, the riders contracted by the dealers are not natives. The locals used are typically informants.

“They are deployed on road junctions and corners to alert the chainsaw operators cutting the trees to hide once they spot suspicious individuals moving towards their location,” he stated. 

On Monday, Mr Geoffrey Okello Okuna from the Acholi chiefdom said the cultural institution recently instituted an inter-clan structure to monitor compliance.

“A resolution was passed, and it was agreed that indiscriminate tree cutting be abolished and more specifically cutting endangered species like shea trees. Our sensitisation in almost all the clans ended in December with east Acholi, and the vice is going down,” Mr Okello said, adding: “The coming of the military to enforce the ban on commercial charcoal production has really scaled down the destruction on the environment because early last year, before the soldiers came, the police were dilly-dallying and the vice is going down now drastically.”