KCCA ED Buzeki, Kigenyi clean Railway Crossing water channel

KAMPALA - Ndeeba residents, a busy commercial hub, were excited on Saturday when the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) Executive Director Hajati Sharifa Buzeki spent the day taking part in the cleanup exercise at the troublesome Railway Crossing water channel.

Buzeki was in company of her deputy Benon Kigenyi.

For a long time, residents and traders near the ‘Bitaala’ Market have had challenges with the channel, located along the Ndeeba-Kabowa road, that causes heavy flooding whenever it rains.

Rainwater often blocks the road and affects traffic flow, enters people’s homes, shops and washes away fresh foods and other merchandise in the market.

But after visiting the site two weeks earlier, Buzeki and Kigenyi on Saturday, September 06, 2025, returned to the site with a team of KCCA technical staff, led by Eng. Justus Akankwasa, the director engineering and technical services.

According to Buzeki, they first deployed men using hand tools, but later abandoned the work after realising that due to the gravity of the problem, they needed an excavator and other heavy machines to do the work.

The team spent the morning at the site and returned in the evening to supervise the workers to ensure that the work was done thoroughly to their satisfaction.

Buzeki urged the communities to stop dumping garbage in drainage channels and asked them to maintain them for the good of their environment and reduce incidents of flooding in the city. (All Photos by Eddie Ssejjoba)

“We are here for a general clean-up exercise to desilt our channels. We came here two weeks ago and looked at the needs of the community. We found out that there is an ungazetted market along the railway line, but the channel behind it was clogged,” she said.

She added, “As I always tell our people, it is expensive to desilt these channels, but people use them as dumping places, filling them with waste, blocking the flow of rainwater.”

She urged the communities to stop dumping garbage in drainage channels and asked them to maintain them for the good of their environment and reduce incidents of flooding in the city.

She said KCCA was also confronted by a big challenge, people trading in the market, which she said built temporary structures near the drainage and resisted attempts to evict them.

“Because of their resistance, we have been having problems accessing this channel, but surprisingly, today when we talked to them, they all agreed, they saw the problem, they agreed and removed their temporary structures and work is going on,” she said and commended the leaders for persuading the traders to oblige.

“Wherever we have not found resistance from encroachers who settled near water channels, we have been able to do our work.”

“Some leaders are complaining that we are taking too long to work on the channels that lead to constant flooding, but we urge them to mobilise their communities to allow our technical staff to access these places and do their work,” she said.

Kigenyi said, among other challenges, residents have been complaining about floods creating mosquito breeding points, causing diseases for children and adults.  

He said that cleaning the channel to prevent stagnant water would reduce water-borne diseases.

Eng. Akankwasa appealed to residents to find gazetted places to dump garbage instead of dumping it in the channel, hoping it would be eroded by the running water.

He said they have been regularly cleaning the Nalukolongo channel, another hot spot for flooding, but said they have a grand plan to enlarge it and reconstruct it.

“But we have problems with encroachers who have built temporary structures on the channel. That is why we appeal to the leadership in this place to help us and persuade the communities to willingly vacate, because the designs are in place, but we cannot do anything until they leave,” he explained and asked for their cooperation."