Failure of adhering to plans making Kampala look like a slum

By Titus Kakembo

Uganda’s population is projected to reach 54 million by 2025, of which 30% will be living in urban areas. However, the Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban development, Omara Atubo, said towns are overwhelmed by sewerage ‘floods’ caused by poor waste management.

“Our towns have for long suffered flush-toilet ‘floods’ because of indiscriminate housing development in wetlands, yet the towns are experiencing poor solid waste management.”

Atubo made the comments two months ago while announcing guidelines to be followed by urban centre developers in the next 10 years.

He lamented that even where there was some kind of structural planning in the old urban centres, the plans have since expired and are in dire need of review.

“Worse still, newly growing urban centres and district headquarters have never had any planning intervention.”

A casual glance at Kampala city and its suburbs is a revelation of a city being turned into a big slum. Developers are constructing buildings all over the place with many lacking the bare minimum of an access road. There seems to be a lot of construction going on, but shortage of residential houses continues to bite every day.

“Today the country is experiencing a shortage of 600,000 residential houses. Given the high interest rates, owning a house remains a dream for many Ugandans,” laments the Real Expo 2008 managing director, Moses Zikusooka.

“The rent for a modest house is sh300,000 per month. And yet such a house will lack most basic amenities,” observed Zikusooka.

All this is as a result of either failure to follow development plans or the sheer lack of them.

However, Simon Muhumuza, the Kampala City Council (KCC) public relations officer, says KCC has always had plans to contain the population explosion and structural development and expansion, but it lacks funds to implement the necessary services.

“To de-congest the city, KCC has in plan satellite towns that have been pending to be built in Nsambya and Nakawa suburbs, but since government took over management of the city at the height of the preparations to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, KCC has little to say. Everything is in the hands of the Ministry of Local Government.”

Explaining how satellite towns would ease the overwhelmed services, Muhumuza says, the residents would work, reside and have access to every basic service wherever they live, without having to get into the city centre.

“The idea of satellite towns, is to have self-sustaining settlements with good schools, hospitals, play centres and entertainment services in the same locality.”

He said, like London in the UK or New York in the US, the pressure on the city centre services will be eased.

“With such an arrangement, Kampala city will be able to contain the swelling number of people, increasing volume of transport and management of heaps of garbage by executing the designed structural plans.”