Kampala Central Resident City Commissioner (RCC) Shafik Nsubuga has revealed that vendors have been paying a lot of money to different individuals including Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) enforcement commanders and others under the guise of supporting the ruling National Resistance Movement Party (NRM).
Nsubuga told Ono Bwino that the KCCA enforcement team have contributed a lot to vendors stay on Kampala streets because they have been giving them intelligence information which has been helping them to run into hiding every time operations against them intensified.
This website has established that the reason why KCCA Executive Director Hajat Sharif Buzeki and other top leaders have been storming city streets at night as the operations to evict vendors were being executed is because they were told that their enforcement team allowed them to operate at night.
Nsubuga revealed that during day-to-day morning briefing parades, he has been seeing enforcement officers suspiciously running behind walls to make frantic phone calls which he later understood were meant to tip off vendors to vacate the streets because operations against them were going to kick off.
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Kampala senior minister Hajat Minsa Kabanda confirmed that top KCCA leaders received a detailed report on how enforcement officers have been receiving daily, weekly and monthly payments from vendors. She thus warned them to stop or they face punishment including imprisonment once arrested.
“Now we are aware that our officers have been helping those vendors to operate illegally on the streets of Kampala, let them advise them to go and operate in the already established markets instead of operating illegally,” Kabanda said.
Apart from KCCA enforcement team, Ono Bwino has established that there were prominent individuals including a one Lumala, a National Resistance Movement (NRM) diehard and journalists who have been also receiving money from vendors.
Recently, a tearful video of Lumala went viral on social media in which he was accusing NRM top leaders in the city especially minister Kabanda and Kampala Central mayor Salim Uhuru of betraying him by evicting him from the street where he has been operating from.
Lumala claimed that both minister Kabanda and Uhuru assured him that he is not going to be evicted because he mobilised political support to President Museveni and NRM.
Lumala confirmed to this website that controversial city tycoon Hamis Kiggundu saved him by allocating to him a free shop on one of his buildings in the city centre. He advised other vendors to accept KCCA directive and move to the already allocated markets.
However, this website has also established that Lumala is a very rich man and he recently concluded the building of his multimillion home in Bunamwaya in Wakiso district.
Sources said that Lumala has been in the control of all streets along Mini Price and he has been responsible for a locating space where vendors have been operating from where each vendor has been paying him according to the space and place, he operates from.
He has been using Mini Price police station to discipline vendors who disobey his orders especially those who try to run away with his money and they have been paying him daily, weekly and monthly.
“He erected that tent and branded it with NRM colours including President Museveni’s portraits to shield himself because he was very aware that with Museveni’s portraits, no one could touch him,” a source close to him said.
He added that during the concluded general elections campaigns, he received more than Shs30m from the NRM Secretariat for political mobilization and he used part of it to buy a loud speaker, complete his house and change schools for his children.
Lumala admitted that indeed he has benefited from vendors, even though he wondered why we are concentrating on him when other people including policemen, KCCA officers, journalists and politicians have also been getting money from vendors through renting them their spaces on the streets.
He boasted that is not regretting supporting Museveni, noting that is the reason why Kiggundu has given him a free shop on his building rubbishing those accuses him of not having gains to protect under Museveni leadership.
