Butabika land leasing to go on

May 11, 2004

THE Uganda Land Commission (ULC) will go ahead to re-allocate more than two-thirds of Butabika Hospital’s 656-acre land to private investors despite protests from MPs and the Ministry of Health.

By Charles Wendo,
John Eremu and
Alfred Wasike

THE Uganda Land Commission (ULC) will go ahead to re-allocate more than two-thirds of Butabika Hospital’s 656-acre land to private investors despite protests from MPs and the Ministry of Health.

Uganda Land Commission chairman Mayanja Nkangi said, “We made a decision on April 23 to lease off some land to a philanthropic group of people. We are leasing and not selling the land.”

But three days before that, the Minister of Water, Lands and Environment, Col. Kahinda Otafiire, wrote to the Minister of Health, Brig. Jim Muhwezi, insisting on leasing the land.

He said they had reserved 110 acres for the hospital for future development and that was “more than enough.”

The Ministry of Health opposes the re-allocation on grounds that the land belongs to the health sector, and that having numerous private developments close to the wards would disturb the mental patients and hinder their recovery.

Nkangi said they had reserved 150 of the original 656 acres and they considered that ample.

A block of 250 acres has been curved out for Sarna Trading of P. O. Box 61493, Jebel Ali, Dubai.

Mukwano Industries and Property Services Limited of Kampala will get 25 acres each. A total of 190 acres will be divided into smaller plots and allocated to individuals.
Nkangi said 10 acres of wetland would be protected but hospital sources said the wetland is about 50 acres.

New structures being constructed with a $48m (sh96b) loan from the African Development Bank, a big chunk of wetland and sewerage lagoons were part of the land originally demarcated for re-allocation, according to a map that The New Vision has seen.
Nkangi said they had changed the original plan to save the structures.

The map indicating the re-allocated portions bears Otafiire’s signature and a handwritten instruction to the ULC chairman: “Please
operationalise this plan.”

The instruction is meant to cancel the 656-acre land title that Butabika Hospital obtained in 1948.

On November 23, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health, Mohammed Kezaala, wrote to the permanent secretary in Ministry of Water, Lands and Environment saying “the land in question cannot be validly allocated as it already belongs to Butabika Hospital.”

The State Minister for Health, Capt. Mike Mukula, on December 3, 2003 wrote to the ULC to “strongly object to any undue interference” with the developments currently going on in Butabika.

Mukula said Butabika Hospital was in 1946 allocated land away from business areas because mental patients require a peaceful and spacious environment.

He warned that with an ever-growing number of mental patients, the hospital would need even more space in future.

However, on April 20, 2004, Otafiire wrote to the Minister of Health, saying he would go ahead with the re-allocation.

“Modern hospitals do not require a lot of land,” he said.

He also said no hospital could be an island, and that the investors would be required to conform to environmental regulations.

He added that one of the investors would construct a modern hospital to compliment Butabika.

Ends

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