Mutagamba addressing the residents of Kasula parish in Kyalulangira sub-county, Rakai district

By Ali Mambule

The Minister of water and environment, Maria Mutagamba, has asked Parliament to degazette areas which were marked as forest reserves in Kooki and Rakai.

She said by the time these areas were marked, there were few people. “The population has grown yet the land does not expand. We need to degazette some of the forest reserves to accomodate our people,” she said.

Mutagamba made the appeal during the committee’s tour of Kooki county in Rakai district. Members of parliament met the residents who are on the verge of being evicted.

Mutagamba said 70% of the land marked as forest reserve is occupied, adding that there was need to sensitise the occupants on how to preserve the forests.

The people of Kooki, however, attacked the government for threatening to evict them.

“We thought that the NRM government was the best but it is surprising to learn that the very government we are praising is trying to evict us from our ancestral land,” Wilson Byaruhanga of Kasula Lwembajja village said. Kyalulangira sub-county chairperson, Erisa Semanda, told the MPs that roads, schools, non-governmental organisations and the sub-county headquarters had been constructed in the so-called forest reserves, adding that he wondered what would happen to them.

The committee was shocked to learn that most of the people had land titles in the forest reserves. Mutagamba said the problem had been created by former President Idi Amin’s double standards.

Mutagamba assured the people of Rakai districtthat her committee would come up with a decision after the tour.