Masaka City runs into wall over office location

Masaka City Council is still stuck on where to establish the new city headquarters after a piece of land it had earmarked for the project became contentious.

Mr Vincent Okurut, the Masaka City clerk, said although the city had earlier decided to put its new city headquarters at Kitabiro Hill where Masaka District offices are currently housed, the delayed relocation of the district headquarters forced them to think of an alternative place, which was also later claimed by a private developer, who is said to have a land title on the same piece of land.

The stand-off between the city and the district over ownership of Kitabiro property, according to Mr Okurut, has left the two entities stuck on how to proceed.

“We had a preferred location for the headquarters, which the district is currently occupying and when the council made a resolution for another location, it also had controversy. We were advised to relocate to where we had earlier decided (Kitabiro Hill), which is still under dispute because the district is not about to leave,” Mr Okurut said last week.

Following the elevation of Masaka Town to a city status on 1 July, 2020, the district headquarters within the city centre had to be shifted to a new location outside the city, according to Local Government policy. This has not been the case.

Some local leaders have since 2020 been pushing to have the district headquarters remain in the city, but city councillors and mayor Florence Namayanja have opposed this idea, saying it is against the decentralisation policy.

When members of the Parliamentary Accounts Committee on Local Government last week visited Masaka to engage local leaders on the report of the Auditor General for the year ended June 2022, the committee vice chairperson, Mr Lutamaguzi Ssemakula (Nakaseke South MP), urged both sides to dialogue. He advised the city authorities and the district leadership to sit and agree on what has to be done and make suggestions to the Ministry of Local Government on how this issue can be swiftly and amicably resolved.

“We expect the political leaders in this area to sit and agree on how best these clashes between city and district can be solved because it directly affects your electorate who need service delivery,” Mr Lutamaguzi said.  

Masaka City authorities had proposed to construct the city headquarters on a public piece of land at Katwe junction, adjacent to Masaka Regional Referral Hospital.

However, a private developer emerged recently with a title of part of this land, delaying the move by the city to get where to establish its city headquarters.

This prompted Mr Hood Hussein, the Masaka Resident City Commissioner, to order for boundary opening of the piece of land at Katwe junction which is yet to be undertaken.

Masaka last had a well-designed council hall in the 1970s but the structure was destroyed during the National Resistance Army bush war that led to the collapse of former president Idi Amin.

In 2011, a half-acre piece of land that housed the bombed town hall was allocated to the defunct Crane Bank to construct its branch in Masaka Town. The then municipal council also passed a resolution to sell the Mayor’s Gardens to raise money to finance the construction of a new town hall.

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