By Mutabazi Sam Stewart
People who have traveled to modern cities both in Africa and the West think Kampala is the largest slum in the world with no sense of direction in terms planning and human settlement management. They find it a mockery to call Kampala a city apart from, may be, the population density that reside in this area called Kampala. Things have been getting from bad to worse and worse to worst and there seems to be no signs of retraction. Everything that can perhaps go wrong in a city has possibly happened in Kampala. Because people have complained for too long without any response from those in charge, most of us have come to accept to live our lives in this city as if everything is normal. This has made people at KCC to relax, going to office every day, pretending to be working when in actual sense they are not producing any results.
There is need to exert a lot of pressure on KCC if we are to put Kampala at the same level of orderliness and development as other cities in the world. The pressure must be unwavering and firm on specific personalities like the Mayor and the Town clerk until they may not be able to take it any more which would force them either to act to our expectations or to abdicate and resign their positions. This act should be repeated on new office bearers until we get better managers who can positively change the appearance of Kampala.
People at KCC seem to be preoccupied with harassing traders to pay tax which has made them forget their role of planning for the city. The city’s infrastructure keeps getting worse every passing day and hopes are quickly fading as to when we shall have long term visionary thinkers that can get us out of this mess. A friend of mine from Belgium who had come to visit was appalled by the state of our city. He remarked that it would take absolutely dormant people to accept the status quo. He said it was incomprehensible that Ugandans are not raising hard questions to their leaders about the state of things in the city. He said Kampala passes as one of the filthiest cities and added that if citizens do not rise up to demand for better services, the leadership will “keep sleeping”.
We need people who think beyond allowances and personal aggrandizement to take charge at KCC. We needs long term planners who are outward looking to help change the face of this city. We need radical measures that would see outright demolition of illegal structures that sprout up in every division within the city. Someone with resolute steadfastness needs to be in charge and must be entrusted with full responsibility of transforming the appearance of the city in a specified period of time.
Recently, one of the dailies published a photo on its cover page depicting poor maintenance and misuse of Nakivubo Channel by the people that operate near it. All kinds of garbage are dumped into the channel including plastic bottles and garbage. The 9.1 Km channel was rehabilitated in 2002 and completed in 2004 at cost of 23 billion by a Chinese company, China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC). City dwellers were promised during construction that flooding in Kampala would be no more at the completion of the channel. It was meant to be wide enough to take up all the water from the raised areas of the city into Lake Victoria. As of now however the channel seems not to have had much impact. Flooding has instead worsened in the city and the channel is a real ugly sight because it is not regularly silted. It is one of the many failed hopes that has kept city dwellers wondering if they have any competent leadership at KCC that is capable of planning for and developing the city for the good of our capital city.
There seem to be no innovativeness whatsoever at the City Hall. For Instance I would have imagined that someone would bring the idea of building a road above Nakivubo channel. The channel that passes through the city right from the northern part to the southern would help to ease the incessant traffic jams that we have today. The channel would be widened a bit further and above it a road would be constructed supported by strong pillars. This would mean that the channel is well protected while the road would de-congest Bombo, Kampala and Jinja roads that run parallel to the channel. This is not rocket science. It is simply because people at KCC do not think hard enough to come up with solutions to our problems. I am waiting for a miracle when KCC do something right for our city, at least for once.
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