Rukundo (right) listens as the Benet air out their concerns at Parliament gardens on Thursday

By Madinah Tebajjukira

ENCROACHERS on Mt. Elgon National Park are camping at Parliament to persuade the Government to allocate them land.

The group of about 100 from Mbale, Sironko, Bukwo and Kapchorwa districts, is being evicted by the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) from the land which surrounds the park.

Tourism state minister Serapio Rukundo said in 1983 the government provided 6,000 hectares of land to the landless Benet community but the leaders involved in allocating the land instead gave big chunks of it to their relatives.

“The process of resettling these people into the 6,000ha was badly managed,” Lilian Nsubuga, UWA’s public relations manager, said, adding that most of the Benet ended up settling in the park.

In a March 17 letter to the Kapchorwa and Bukwo resident district commissioners, Janat Mukwaya, the Minister for Tourism, urged that genuine landless Benet be identified, to allow proper planning.

“It is important that non-Benet and other categories of landless people who wrongly benefited from the resettlement be identified and advised to vacate the land. All illegal settlers must be evicted urgently so that those resettled are able to plant crops,” Mukwaya noted. She also asked the RDCs to identify those who misused their positions to benefit from the resettlement exercise particularly the forestry staff who were in Kapchorwa in 1983.

Rukundo urged the group at Parliament to go back home as the Government plans their resettlement.

However, the group vowed not to leave Parliament until a solution was found. Some said they didn’t have transport.
“We could go, but we have no means,” Nelson Kitiyo one of the group leaders said.