200805131276 | Wakiso bibanja residents appeal to Museveni over evictions

Wakiso bibanja residents appeal to Museveni over evictions

RESIDENTS of Kasambya village in Busukuma sub-county in Wakiso district have appealed to President Yoweri Museveni to save them from forceful evictions from their bibanja (plots of land). The tearful residents, especially widows and old women, told the land fact-finding committee that their landlord had sold off almost an entire village and the buyer fenced off their land.

Hadija Namigadde, a widow, told the team headed by Edrisa Sseddunga that their landlord, William Musajjalumbwa Kitaamirike, sold off the land and the new landlord fenced off part of her land. He put up a school and a farm on the land.

“He stopped us from harvesting our crops. He has also told me to pay him for the remaining piece of my kibanja but I have no money,” she said. Namigadde was growing coffee, cassava and bananas on the land.

“He threatened to arrest anyone found trespassing in the area. But we have lived here for a long time.

Our grandfathers left us the land,” she said. Fatuma Namusoke Bukirwa, 88, a widow, said her great-grandfather’s grave was fenced off.

“Men came and surveyed the land and later told us to prepare to leave. They put up some projects on the land without compensating us. But where can we go with our grandchildren,” Bukirwa said. She added that she was born on the kibanja in the early 1930s.

The area intelligence security officer, Lawrence Mubiru, said the villagers were panicking as buyers were evicting and fencing off their plots before the Land Bill is passed.

Sseddunga urged the residents not to leave their land until the law is passed. “Your suffering was one of the reasons why the President wanted this Bill passed,” he said.