Owino market.
Leaders of St Balikuddembe Stalls, Spaces, and Lockup Owners Association-SSLOA, have vowed not to return the lease title certificates for the cancellation to the Ministry of Lands.
Last week, Johnson Bigiira, the commissioner of land registration, asked the leaders to return the duplicate title certificates for cancellation within 7 days, after a re-entry was noted on them.
Daniel Kasasa, the Director for Mobilization and Marketing at SSLOA, says that they are not ready to return the certificates because they are in their possession legally.
The land in question comprises plots 24, M34, 20A-22A, and M77B Nakivubo place, which was leased to SSLOA for 99 years in 2014, following a directive by President Museveni.
Documents from Kampala District Land Board, indicate that SSLOA was supposed to redevelop the land initially under the then KCC.
Whereas SSLOA had not yet developed the land, in 2018, President Museveni made a U-turn and directed that market ownership revert to local government.
According to David Balondemu, the KDLB Chairperson, the presidential directive implied that the lease is recalled, but the process of notification of the re-entry had stalled at the commissioner’s land registration, until early this month when the President directed the Minister for Lands to effect the re-entry, which was finally done last week.
Documents from the lands ministry indicate that the re-entry of these titles doesn’t attract any compensation to SSLOA because the government and the association are already working out payment terms of a 17.5 billion shilling in compensations, arising from a suit in which SSLOA won the government over holding the association’s money illegally.
Kasasa says that officials in KDLB and KCCA are misinforming the President on the matter yet they know the truth. He says that the ten years they were given to redevelop the land have not yet elapsed.
Kasasa, alleges that KCCA is deliberately sabotaging the market redevelopment, by refusing to approve their plans which they submitted in 2016, and 2020.
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