A section of MPs have formed a forum named the Uganda Parliamentarians land management forum aimed at finding solutions to the rampant land wrangles and evictions in Uganda.
While announcing the Uganda Parliamentarians Land Management Forum at Parliament, Kiboga Woman MP, Christine Nakimwero, said the Forum will champion the review of the land policies to streamline land matters in the country as well as establishing an information centre where they will receive information from different constituencies across the country to help Ugandans who are victims of the numerous land evictions.
“We have issues of cultural heritage that have a lot of land governance issues. Compulsory land acquisition are some of the issues cited and the bill cited to be brought to parliament but we want to pick a human resource platform of MPs who can ably debate issues of land in parliament and a Forum that will conduct research on all land matters in Uganda,” said Nakimwero.
Gloria Acay, an official from Food Rights Alliance tasked the lawmakers to fast track the policies on land management in order to help Ugandans overcome the challenges of land conflict, citing an initiative that was proposed to develop the land acquisition rehabilitation policy, arguing this if this is put in place, it will help in rehabilitating people who have been evicted in the country because evictions are carried out without alternative plans.
She said, “And at the same time, we do need the evaluation bill to be fast tracked and go forward, the evaluation in Uganda as far as compensation is concerned has been in a way that they use the market value to evaluate how much they are supposed to give to each people affected, but if you are given Shs3M you are expected to find land somewhere else and maybe you may find it is more expensive. This is an issue that the country shouldn’t just ignore.”
The others members on the Forum include; David David Lukyamuzi (Busujju County), Asinasi Nyakato (DWR Hoima City) and Patrick Nyanzi (Butemba County).
They welcomed the establishment of the forum arguing that many Ugandans are suffering in courts of law to due to financial constraints and case backlog in courts of law and the Forum will work towards improving service delivery in land management.
It should be recalled that while addressing guests at the 22nd Annual Judge’s Conference in January 2020, the then Principal Judge Dr. Flavian Zeija indicated that the case backlog had grown to 36,009 cases in 2019 representing 88% increment and and Land Division alone accounted for a case backlog of 5,681 cases.
