Prevent repeat of 2018 crime wave in new year

Every new year comes with a lot of hope and so is 2019. However, this optimism often soon or slowly gets extinguished making the new year no different from the previous one.
This week, people worldwide, and particularly in Uganda, welcomed 2019 with a lot of pomp and hope for the better. Fireworks lit up the skies, trumpets were blown and other musical instruments were sounded to usher in the new year, new hope. A mood of high anticipation and expectation hung heavily in the air.

However, the ugly hand of evil and criminals is threatening to derail or to extinguish this new hope in infancy. As citizens were warming up for the new year and to forget the evils of murder, kidnap, ritual sacrifice, violence, etc that ruined the 2018 aspirations, a new wave of evil struck. A third year student at Makerere University Simon Ashaba was kidnapped by assailants who demanded a ransom. As the family was still mobilising the ransom, the kidnappers called on Ashaba’s phone to direct the family where they would find him. Ashaba was later found unconscious on the road to Butabika Hospital in Luzira parish, Kampala.

He succumbed to the injuries at Kibuli Hospital later. Although the matter had been reported to police, no suspect has been arrested.
On the eve of new year, a two-year-old boy in Bunamwaya, a city outskirt, who had just celebrated his birthday, was grabbed and strangled a few metres away from his home and his body dumped in a septic tank. Although police say investigations have started, no arrest has been made so far.
Just on or about the same day, a woman in Katabi Town Council in Entebbe area killed her husband in domestic violence.

More similar cases of homicide have happened around and outside Kampala during the festive season. At the height of kidnaps, assassinations and target killings in Kampala and various parts of the country in 2018, the President stipulated a raft of measures to be undertaken by the security agencies to stop the killings, but the criminals have continued their heinousness.

The security agencies should step up crime intelligence, community policing and sensitisation and implement the President’s proposals to ensure the country does not suffer repeat of the wave of crimes in the new year as experienced in 2018.
Let’s apply every effort to stop the criminals and ensure 2019 a successful and happy year for us all.