Involve slum dwellers in the project
Jul 25, 2007
EDITOR—The funding of the Kampala Integrated Environmental Management Project is a great relief. Ugandans are so grateful to the people of Belgium for their kind help. However wouldn’t the slum dwellers wish to have been availed detailed plans of the programme and to be part of the planning pro
EDITOR—The funding of the Kampala Integrated Environmental Management Project is a great relief. Ugandans are so grateful to the people of Belgium for their kind help. However wouldn’t the slum dwellers wish to have been availed detailed plans of the programme and to be part of the planning process? Given the rampant corruption in Uganda, the slum dwellers might be justified to fear that Kampala City Council might hoodwink them that they are redeveloping the slums, without their input.
These slum locations have a range of 2000 to 3000 people each. Whether it is a landlord, bona fide tenant or just part of the transient populations, the planning should involve the the stakeholders to be sustainable. It is only then that the beneficiaries will be assured to be part and parcel of the area being planned. How planning and development of urban areas is undertaken is well explained in Uganda’s Country and Town planning Act 2000, similar to many European planning laws. I would suppose slums are redeveloped, modelled and planned by physical planners, civil works engineers, biologists, surveyors, architects and sociologists. Politicians on their part, approve the plans, specifically and in consideration, to budgetary provisions and allocation and minor political and legal issues. This is not the procedure followed in the project. As stakeholders, slum dwellers, would like to see and appreciate the entire details of the programme documentation handbook and models and implementation scheme or time-frame. Sh15b is earmarked to upgrade Kampala’s slums and the slum dwellers might wish to ask the project manager, Dr. Dan Twebaze and Kampala deputy mayor Florence Namayanja, where the recent cartographic (maps) studies of the planned areas, and plan models are, as a matter of public scrutiny.
The ministries of housing, urban development, works and transport, nema, the National Water, umeme, utl and the local government must have contributed substantially, to this positive development. It is reported that the project will be building 12km of access roads, 13,000 square metres of drainage channels, 35 sanitation facilities, 3km of water main lines, 35 water stand posts as well as planting 16,000 trees.
This implies that placement of the above infrastructures had already been studied and planned through land surveyed and cartographic studies. Infrastructures are technical details only professionals can explain and design, and therefore documented in a handbook. For example, placement of water and sewage pipes call for study of the topography and meticulous geometrical calculations of flow gradients. Do KCC or the Belgian government have details of this data. How can it be accessed?
Bwanika Nakyesawa
Luwero
These slum locations have a range of 2000 to 3000 people each. Whether it is a landlord, bona fide tenant or just part of the transient populations, the planning should involve the the stakeholders to be sustainable. It is only then that the beneficiaries will be assured to be part and parcel of the area being planned. How planning and development of urban areas is undertaken is well explained in Uganda’s Country and Town planning Act 2000, similar to many European planning laws. I would suppose slums are redeveloped, modelled and planned by physical planners, civil works engineers, biologists, surveyors, architects and sociologists. Politicians on their part, approve the plans, specifically and in consideration, to budgetary provisions and allocation and minor political and legal issues. This is not the procedure followed in the project. As stakeholders, slum dwellers, would like to see and appreciate the entire details of the programme documentation handbook and models and implementation scheme or time-frame. Sh15b is earmarked to upgrade Kampala’s slums and the slum dwellers might wish to ask the project manager, Dr. Dan Twebaze and Kampala deputy mayor Florence Namayanja, where the recent cartographic (maps) studies of the planned areas, and plan models are, as a matter of public scrutiny.
The ministries of housing, urban development, works and transport, nema, the National Water, umeme, utl and the local government must have contributed substantially, to this positive development. It is reported that the project will be building 12km of access roads, 13,000 square metres of drainage channels, 35 sanitation facilities, 3km of water main lines, 35 water stand posts as well as planting 16,000 trees.
This implies that placement of the above infrastructures had already been studied and planned through land surveyed and cartographic studies. Infrastructures are technical details only professionals can explain and design, and therefore documented in a handbook. For example, placement of water and sewage pipes call for study of the topography and meticulous geometrical calculations of flow gradients. Do KCC or the Belgian government have details of this data. How can it be accessed?
Bwanika Nakyesawa
Luwero