Police retrieve body of drowned woman
A man looks through a drainage channel where Cissy Namukasa fell before being swept away by floods in Nakawa Division, Kampala, on May 2. Inset is Namukasa. PHOTO | KELVIN ATUHAIRE.
What you need to know:
- Kampala Metropolitan Police deputy spokesperson Luke Owoyesigyire confirmed to this newspaper yesterday that the retrieved body had been taken to Mulago Hospital Mortuary.
Police last Sunday retrieved a woman’s body from a swamp in Kanyogoga-Namuwongo in Makindye Division following a tipoff from residents.
The body is suspected to be of a woman who drowned in Kampala City floods in May.
Kampala Metropolitan Police deputy spokesperson Luke Owoyesigyire confirmed to this newspaper yesterday that the retrieved body had been taken to Mulago Hospital Mortuary.
Mr Owoyesigyire also said samples were taken to the Government Analytical Laboratory to carry out a DNA examination.
“Relatives of the woman who drowned in Kampala have claimed that the body is that of their relative but we cannot confirm this as police before we see DNA results. They have to be patient as experts work on the process to release results,” he said.
Speaking to NTV, a sister station to this newspaper on Sunday, Mr Brian Kayongo, a relative of the late Namukasa, said the features on the retrieved body like the teeth resemble those of their deceased relative.
CCTV footage
Namukasa’s drowning was highlighted by a CCTV footage. According to the footage, the late, who was walking on a pavement after a downpour, slid and fell into the drainage channel.
Efforts to retrieve the body were futile.
Kampala Metropolitan police spokesperson Patrick Onyango said at that time that their efforts to retrieve Namukasa’s body were frustrated by high water levels.
The retrieval of the body comes barely one month after Police retrieved two bodies of a male and a female from Nakivubo channel at Clock Tower. The victims drowned in the city floods following a downpour.
Namukasa’s death sparked mass criticism against Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) for not fixing the open drainage channels, which have claimed many lives every rainy season.
During one of a council meetings at City Hall in May, KCCA speaker Abubaker Kawalya demanded a report on the status of drainage channels and manholes in the city from the technocrats in the engineering department.
However, a report is yet to be compiled, five months later.
In August 2017, Oliver Basemer, a street vendor, also died in Nakivubo drainage channel as she fled KCCA law enforcement officers who were pursuing her.
City drainage mess
In 2018, KCCA updated the 2003 drainage masterplan to resolve Kampala’s flooding crisis, but currently it says it has budget deficits and cannot implement the masterplan. The few upgraded channels were constructed under the second phase of Kampala Institutional and Infrastructural Development Project (KIIDP-2), which is bankrolled by World Bank. However, this project ends in December.
