Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) has defended its decision to acquire a 230-acre piece of land in the Buto-Buvuma Central Forest Reserve for a landfill.
This follows the National Forestry Authority (NFA) ban on the use of the land on grounds that it is a forest reserve.
KCCA spokesperson Daniel Nuw’abine said the city authority conducted due diligence before purchasing the land and the Courts ruled on the actual owners of the land.
“If NFA had any issues with the proprietor of that land, it was settled by the court,” Nuw’abine stated. He added that a court ruling affirmed the ownership of the land by the current proprietors, not NFA. However, he declined to disclose the identities of the sellers or the price of the transaction.
However, the Acting Executive Director, NFA, Stuart Maniraguha, has labeled KCCA’s move illegal, claiming the land is part of a protected forest reserve and accusing KCCA of obtaining it under dubious circumstances.
“There is no way the government can buy its land, and if there is anyone claiming to own that land, that should not be accepted,” Maniraguha said. “We are fully aware most of the land titles in this forest were illegally created. We have asked the Ministry of Lands to cancel them because all the demarcations and boundaries are very clear.”
He emphasized that NFA is determined to conserve the Buto-Buvuma forest and warned that any licensed tree farmers found colluding with KCCA would face prosecution.
The forest reserve in question is no ordinary patch of land, it serves as a crucial catchment area for River Mayanja, a lifeline for Lake Victoria. Environmentalists warn that its destruction could wreak havoc on the Victoria basin’s biodiversity ecosystem.
Maniraguha suggested that KCCA could explore setting up a waste management site, not a landfill, within the forest reserve, provided stringent environmental impact assessments are carried out.
“As long as we have concluded the feasibility study and the waste management strategy, there are possibilities of accepting such a site in a forest, as long as we can manage the impact that the waste management would come along with,” he explained.
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