By Mulengera Reporters
In a Friday media address, the leadership of the Kampala-based hawkers (abatembeyi) decried the collapse of government’s institutional leadership at the different levels and implored Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the CDF, to create time and walk through downtown Kampala.
Led by their Chairman Joseph Kagolo Ssalongo, the hawkers said they had tried to have their plight sustainably addressed with durable solutions by petitioning and approaching leaders at different levels, including having direct engagement with Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja, but no progress had been made.
Kagolo accused the KCCA leadership of being against hawkers, which is why they are always treated like trash as was seen during the recent operation that saw thousands of them forced off the streets of Kampala. He disputed KCCA assertions that there are vacant working spaces in the city’s public markets.
“Over the years, we have petitioned several offices but not much has come out of that. Leaders are of two categories. Majority of them are treacherous and only use our problems to get intelligence information from us which they use to blackmail our tormentors to bribe them in return for their silence. The other category is where our dear Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago falls. He means well and wishes the best for each one of us but he is powerless though we appreciate his courage to always stand with us, the low-income earners in the city,” Kagolo said.
He added that the President also means well and can help them but the problem is that reaching him is very hard. “And to meet him, we have to be coordinated by some of the officials who were long bought off and compromised by the very people we want to complain to him about. That is why we are appealing to Gen Muhoozi to become interested in our plight and come to have a community baraza meeting with us so that we report to him the people who are finishing off Kampala while claiming to be very close to the First Family.”
Kagolo revealed that they have lately been trying to go through Toyota aka Team Chairman who is a big man in PLU and therefore a close ally of Gen MK, to make known their wish to be visited by the President’s son.
He suggested that Gen MK can convene a huge baraza meeting with hawkers at Kololo Ceremonial Grounds or even walk through downtown Kampala and gets to see and appreciate their exclusion and social justice concerns firsthand.
He added that, by solving trade order problems in downtown Kampala, Gen MK will have demonstrated the fact that he is a public-spirited General who is incorruptible and with the ordinary people’s concerns at heart.
Kagolo concluded by saying that currently Gen MK is the only one who can effectively crack the whip to clean the city of thieving and very exploitative tycoons and their enablers inside the government, exactly like he has lately been doing purging wrongdoers inside the military hierarchy.
“If he can decisively go after fellow Generals, we have no doubt he can equally manage to return sanity back to downtown Kampala,” Kagolo concluded in a seperate conversation with online journalist Aggrey Baba Buluba. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
