Kampala senior minister Hajjat Minsa Kabanda has revealed that her boss the Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja Musafiri has directed the Internal Security Organisation (ISO) boss Arthur Mugyenyi to intervene after getting information that fake traders are dominating Nakivubo drainage channel floods victims.
The development comes after Nabbanja directed trader’s leadership to record the names of the affected traders and forward them to her office so that they can be compensated by government as President Museveni directed.
However, Minister Kabanda told this website that as the immediate supervisor of the development, on Wednesday morning, she received a petition from over 200 traders claiming that some of the traders who were forwarded to her on the list that she is supposed to take to the Prime Minister’s office are fake with most of them being girlfriends, family members, dealers and friends of trader’s leaders.
“You know there are people who rented those shops from the landlords and after, they also sub rented them to other traders who are running those shops. So, their details are the ones in the books of the landlords, the real traders in the shops are not known by the landlords, so we want the ISO boss to help us in solving that problem,” Kabanda said
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She added that there is a lot of fraud even on the rent receipts noting that government discovered that traders are paying higher amounts of money to landlords compared to what is recorded on the receipt and because of fear, the traders have not been reporting this fraud to Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) so it will only be ISO to save them from losing out on compensation.
She also revealed that some tenants are very complicated. She argued that on several occasions, government has tried to help them to the extent that they were told to elect building leaders but most of them succumbed to landlords’ pressure and refused to form leaders from their buildings.
She divulged that any person who comes up with such a proposal, is chased away from the building with immediate effect.
She added that even their associations and organisation leadership are using them to enrich themselves through benefits from the President. She narrated how she was embarrassed when they started exchanging bitter words and throwing insults at each other in one of the meetings before the president.
“ I know there are traders who have been throwing names of powerful government officials including my good friend John Kabanda who have been telling people that he is my relative. Its true I have many relatives operating businesses in the city but Kabanda is not part of them. I only share the Kabanda name with him because it’s my lovely husband’s name,” Kabanda revealed.
She added that because traders’ leaders are always looking at making deals to enrich themselves, it’s the reason why whenever traders develop a misunderstanding with government, by the time the disagreement is solved, their leaders’ lifestyle change and they even open up new businesses, marry wives, build houses and buy powerful cars.
She advised traders to be careful with people who are claiming to be their leaders.
This website reported that government is planning to compensate each trader with Shs10m but because of their huge number, the amount will be cut.
Kampala junior minister Christopher Kabuye Kyofatogabye said that even if government is set to compensate traders, it will take ten years. He advised them to put much pressure on their landlords to compensate them because it was established that they contributed to their loss.
However, even though a section of government officials tried to shield controversial businessman Hamis Kiggundu from the blame of contributing to last week floods, Ono Bwino has established that Museveni was briefed by his special operatives on the ground that Kiggundu’s actions of blocking Nakivubo drainage channel is the reason why the floods were disastrous.
This briefing is the reason why Museveni admitted that the mistakes made by Kiggundu will be corrected as Nabbanja boasted that the construction of buildings atop the drainage channel by the businessman will not be stopped.
Hajjat Sharifah Buzeki the KCCA Executive Director directed Kiggundu to stop the ongoing construction atop the drainage channel. She also tasked him to remove all the debris and open the roads around the channel.
