The proliferating unresolved land altercations in Hoima have become a disgust to the Resident District Commissioner (RDC) who has threatened to stop handling them and concentrate on sensitising communities about avenues of legalising land ownership and occupancy.
Mr Emmy Turyabagyenyi Kateera says he is dumbfounded by the unending and unsolved land grabbing disputes in the area involving both the rich and the poor in various parts of the district
He reveals that on office assumption, he found many unsolved land disputes with some as old as 20 years.
For all the land disputes the RDC has so far dealt with, he has realised that they are partly being ignited by the parties’ ignorance of their boundaries sending them into severe disagreements that has resulted either in loss of property or surviving death by a whisker.
Mr Kateera says his intervention to assist the poor to access justice against land criminality is positioning him amidst rivalry especially from the rich who exploit the poor people’s inability to access higher offices to have their grievances righted.
The RDC urges leaders and all people of Hoima to combine efforts and mobilise the community towards guarding their pieces of land through proper demarcation and identification of their land boundaries.
Mr Kateera wants land title owners whose land has been occupied by other people to apply to the Uganda Land Commission so that the government compensates them to give leeway to the people’s legal occupancy.
“I don’t want to be involved in land issues. They have troubled me so much. As government we must come up to know that people want land that has currently gained value. We have to sensitise people about protecting their land with natural boundaries. Land titles will come at a later time,” he says.
Adding: “Whenever I go to settle land disputes, I find that they are communal and whenever I ask them about the boundaries, they start assuming their unidentified communal land boundaries during their fathers’ time. That is hard for me and I am about to leave to delegate my deputy and leave that rubbish. That’s is creating enmity between me and the claimants.”
From the time oil projects began in Hoima, the area has left some people lose their lives and property destroyed as a result of the scramble for land that has had disputes swell.
The recent incident is when residents of Rwobunyonyi village in Buraru sub-county, Hoima district ran amok and burnt a double cabin pickup vehicle registration number UAL 477Z belonging to Hoima District Farmers’ Association (HODFA) on suspicion that it had carried people to survey their land without their consent.
The act has left more than five people on remand at Hoima government prison in Kiryateete whose case will come up for mention again in December 2022.
This followed the residents of Rwobunyonyi, Kirindasojo and Kihohoro villages in Buraru sub-county accusing Mr Fred Mugamba, a resident of Hoima city of allegedly grabbing their land yet he had purportedly never been a resident there.
The demand and price for land has also increased requiring one to disburse at least Shs18m for a plot measuring 50×100ft at the outskirts of the central business district of Hoima city.
Elsewhere in the neighbouring Kikuube district, the Musaijamukuru village chairman, Julius Irumba Nyaika, was last week killed by yet to be identified thugs while transporting building materials to Kasongoire village in Masindi district which the Kikuube RDC, Mr Amlan Tumusiime, hinted on suspiciously hinging on land grabbing that the deceased was fighting against.
