City clerks decry lack of resources for urban management

The Town clerks of the recently created cities have decried lack of expertise and capacity to manage the new cities.

David Kyasanku, the Lira city town clerk claims that immediately lira became a city, challenges started.

“We are now having 285 square kilometres of land to manage with four Annex sub-counties which are totally rural. This means we need a structured development plan to cover up all these institutions since originally we had 36 well planned square kilometres, but now, we need to have a team to go down and capture data and do physical planning which is very expensive,” Lamented Kyasanku.

Some pf the participants of the meeting

Speaking during a stakeholders consultative meeting on physical planning matters in the country organised by the National Physical Planning Board (NPPB), Kyasanku stressed that the city currently has a population of about 500 people which has doubled garbage generation.

“We need more trucks and sensitisation to those who were in rural areas and used to dump their garbage in plantations; that garbage has to be collected and dumped at one collection centre,” he said.

Considering the extension of clean and safe water, Kyasanku stated that since the elevation of Lira city, wells ceased to be part of the ecosystem because they get contaminated.

“We are working with National Water to see how clean piped water can be extended to everybody for consumption,” he said.

John Bahengana Town Clerk Masaka speaking during the meeting

He stated that the city is currently grappling with grading 21000square kilometre of roads with little resources.

He, however, applauded the World Bank for supporting the grading of some areas but expressed concern over the Annex sub-counties.

He observed that the city dwellers have got poor garbage disposal habits saying the city is currently generating almost 200 tons of garbage but can only collect 12 0tons leaving 80 tons unattended to.

“We call upon private ventures to invest in garbage management of the city to ensure proper hygiene and sanity, “he appealed.   

Kyasanku said that physical planning is still a very big challenge because people have to be sensitized that before building, their plans must be approved which he said is a very big challenge.

John Bahengana the Town Clerk Masaka city equally stated that urban management has become very big to enhance physical planning to allow development take place in a planned manner.

“We have road networks and designs, but we are taking over a huge area and people are rushing to building their houses which needs to be done where designs have been done and infrastructure layouts have been cleared such that people don’t build in road reserves, “he said.

He said that Masaka with its current status lacks the capacity to manage the mandates of urban management which involves removing solid wastes from homes to where it is supposed to be dumped.

“We don’t have the right vehicles, we can’t manage to pay the right manpower meaning we are operating below capacity,” he stated.