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At least 20,000 project-affected persons (PAPs) are expected to be compensated as the refurbishment of the Kampala-Malaba metre gauge Railway project gets underway.

Officials from the Uganda Railway Corporation (URC), while appearing before Parliament's national economy committee on Tuesday said compensation of PAPs is one of the conditions of the about shillings 1.1 trillion loan for the project.

URC chief commercial officer Stephen Wakasenza said the African Development Bank, which has provided the $306m (about shillings 1.1 trillion) loan demands that such projects compensate the communities around the project by avoiding tendencies of leaving them worse than they found them.

“It’s true that railway land has been encroached on and a resettlement action plan exercise was undertaken to identify the project-affected persons of the current line and the total comes to 20,000 project-affected persons,” Wakasenza said.

URC acting managing director David Bulega said PAPS have to be compensated as per the bank policy and that a fraction of the loan funds would be withheld if they are not given their fair share.

“The reserve is marked where this metre gauge railway will pass. By going with the history and operations of the railway, this organisation (URC) had been previously privatised where we have seen some idle enforcement of land protection which was not being observed and the agreement was repudiated in 2018,” Bulega told the legislators.

Buliisa MP, Allan Atugonza wondered whether the compensation was for loss of business or land.

In response, Bulega said URC is not compensating for land, but catering for resettlement (livelihood).

“They wrote to the President saying they need compensation and responded how the complaining occupants should have been the ones to pay the President (government) since they had been using government land illegally,” Bulega said as he later revealed that the President agreed that they are resettled with what he termed as ‘aka samosas’

Atugonza then demanded the list of the 20,000 PAPs to avoid the process of compensation being abused.

According to Wakasenza, the total amount for compensation is equivalent to $44m (sh162b) but the project was allocated about 12.26 units which comes to $16.8m (sh61b) by the bank. The balance is expected to be provided by the Government of Uganda.

Transport state minister Fred Byamukama, who appeared on the committee, said the Government had not provided a commitment on the shillings 61 billion.

Committee chairperson John Bosco Ikojo (Bukedea County) had already determined that the balance which was not yet funded by the Government was a staggering $27.2m (sh100b).

According to Atugonza, this is not a small 'aka samosas' that will eventually be paid by taxpayers.

"You have talked of Ndeeba this 'ka samosas' must be compensating for land, it's a lot of money. It's a significant amount of money by percentage considering the amount of loan we are looking for,” Atugonza said.