Author: Ofwono Opondo
KAMPALA Saturday August 31, 2024: The tragedy that struck the KCCA-run garbage landfill at Kiteezi, Nangabo Town Council, Wakiso district two weeks ago was an embarrassment and indictment to the boisterous leadership of Kampala City Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago, and lackluster Executive Director Dorothy Kisaka. While many are tempted to mourn the victims among them 35 retrieved buried dead by the rubbish, many still unaccounted for, and property and businesses worth hundreds of millions lost, the real people we should mourn for is KCCA leadership led by Lukwago and Kisaka who have brought so much disrepute to the city.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, as usual, to win gullible public sympathy, Lukwago filed several media interviews and appeared on live television talk-shows shedding proverbial crocodile tears that did not take long to dry up, and all now appear fine with him. As for Kisaka, possibly embarrassed and lost in the woods, she took a very silent withdrawal from public view, one would imagine she is on a long leave. Kitezi is now in past tense as the world is moving on. Lukwago and his many apologists led by Kizza Besigye have strenuously tried to wring their hands off responsibility claiming that under the KCCA Act, President Yoweri Museveni took away their powers to effectively manage the city, yet they continue to seek re-election and dubiously run around as the real powers.
Warned more than a decade ago that Kiteezi should be decommissioned, KCCA stood by in dereliction of duty, hoping that the gods who have intervened on potholes, gaping manholes on roads and street sidewalks, frustrating traffic jams, streets piled with garbage, rodents, stray dogs, cats, and swarming flies will continue to intercede. Some people have pleaded that the Kiteezi tragedy and the other malaise afflicting Kampala are due to poor budgetary allocation, which is partly true, but does not address the entrenched corruption, shallowness in leadership and lack of policy focus. Maybe, it is time that instead of traveling outside to benchmark with Kigali or Barcelona, KCCA leadership are bused to Gulu, Arau and Fort Portal cities to have the feel of what good leadership and little money when well spent can deliver.
Firstly, as garbage dump, collecting unsorted and ungraded waste, Kiteezi ought to have been cordoned off to unathourised access and use including to those scavenging for trash-for-sale-for cash because it is a dangerous health hazard. Its environs too should not have been allowed for residential purposes. Therefore, the populist talk of compensation to the victims, dead or injured, and those who have lost ‘property’ and ‘businesses’ should not even arise, except extending to them assistance on humanitarian grounds.
To understand the dysfunction at KCCA and possibly in government, the number of the dead, unaccounted for victims, houses, households, workers and businesses around the Kiteezi site are being provided by unqualified sources yet the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) has only recently released its 2024 Population and Housing Census.
And like during the Covid-19 induced stress when government was compelled to distribute food relief items, most likely, some local officials had exaggerated the numbers in Kiteezi in the hope of a similar dubious cash-in. To-date, no one can tell with certainty the amount of money or food, government spent around Kampala during that time, let alone provide an accurate list of the beneficiaries.
Our collective failure at garbage management, sorting and grading makes it even harder for cash strapped KCCA and other urban authorities riddled with incompetence more unable to serve public needs. And as long traders continue to bring into the cities farm produce, livestock and crops with residues that should otherwise remain at the farms in rural areas as composite manure, we should not expect better.
Ofwono Opondo is the Director of Uganda Media Center
Courtesy: Uganda Media Center