Is Rural Electrification Agency stealing people’s land in Kasese?

As you read this, Mr Museveni is expected be in Kasese on what is one of his first upcountry tours in his new term of office. The people of Kasese should welcome him.
 One of Mr Museveni’s staying legacy will be rural electrification. And there is no district that symbolises rural electrification than Kasese. As the district with highest level of riparian drainage, Kasese has more hydro electric dams than any district in Uganda. But there is a problem.

 There are two dams under construction in Bukonzo County (one in Bukonzo East Constituency and the other in Bukonzo West). Rural Electrification Agency (ERA) is supposed to secure land on which transmission lines for these two dams line will run. But ERA seems to be reluctant to compensate people on whose lands the transmission lines will run.
 It so happens the transmission line for the dam in Bukonzo West will pass through Kiburara. The company responsible for constructing the transmission line is Sinotec. I have had run-ins with surveyors hired by Sinotec to delineate the land for transmission. First it was GMT Consult Ltd and Associated Engineering Surveyors Ltd.

 In the third quarter of 2019, I went to GMT Consult offices and we agreed that they would never trespass on my property again. GMT Consult Ltd seems to have withdrawn from the controversial project and was replaced by Associated Engineering Surveyors Ltd.
 So, on Thursday June 3, my bodyguard alerted me about surveyors of Associated Engineering Surveyors Ltd trespassing on my property in Kiburara after breaching the security integrity of the barbed wire fence.

 When I engaged them, they told me the same things GMT Consult told me (about Rural Electrification Agency and whatnot). I showed them the mark stones of my small excuse of a farm marking out my property as surveyed and enjoying titled possession. And then bang: one of the pylons of the transmission project was supposed to be on my property. I was incensed.
 I called Mr Paul Ekallam, their supervisor at Associated Engineering Surveyors Ltd. I informed him that his surveyors had trespassed on my property and risked being treated as criminals. I also told him that his surveyors were the only people working on this project who didn’t have UPDF guards (other actors on this project always had military escorts).

 Mr Ekallam told me Associated Engineering Surveyors Ltd had been hired by Sinotec Ltd to survey land whose owners REA had compensated. I told him I was not part of those compensated people and wasn’t willing to cede even a teaspoon of soil for whatever REA project. He implored me to call a Mr Alex Nuwamanaya from Sinotec.
 Nuwamanya told me their hired surveyors were acting on information from REA to wit: REA had compensated the land owners. Which is why I am asking: is REA cleverly grabbing our land in Kasese?
 
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I told  Nuwamanya that I prefer to be contacted through my lawyers. But in the meantime, I will not be held responsible for what happens to trespassers on my property. And for REA, we shall organise our community to negotiate a re-engagement and a reasonable compensation (forget the peanuts you have paid our people).

 Dear REA, any development, however much needed it be, that disrupts the social economic aspects of communities must be negotiated. Otherwise this project is negatively impacting on the community’s humanity residence in the sedentary settlement on land (race and place).
 On that note, we will seek out REA’s top management to furnish us with information pertaining to the acquisition of land in Kiburara and other areas in Kasese affected by rural electrification programmes. 

Mr Bisiika is the executive editor of the East African Flagpost. [email protected]