By Iryn Nandawula
Njeru district physical planner has pinned the town council for leasing air to the ministry of agriculture. While appearing before the land probe, she cited fraud between the town council officials and ministry of agriculture. She says the ministry was paying more money than the land they had negotiated for on which the stock farm is found. The extra land had encroachers with no titles and also was never formalised. Meme Sofia Hejira who was a Njeru town council planner for 10 years was promoted to district physical planner, a position she currently serves. Her role is to sensitise communities on issues of physical planning, beautify the town council, advise on proper land development and inspection of sites. The land in question, 1066 acres was leased from the Ham Mukasa family to Njeru town council. The ministry of agriculture later was sub-leased to by the council 444 acres for setup of the stock farm which was also to serve as a model farm. However, since the animals were at risk of getting diseases from the bushes, more land was negotiated for. Here, 350 acres which were to be received turned out to actually be 198.17 acres hence the fraudulence, “in the actual sense these people gave them less land.” 444 million premium rent was to be paid with 44 million ground per annum to the town council. This however turned out to be too much for the ministry of agriculture who went into arrears of 700 million. A meeting was held where the minister, Hope Mwesigye gave an ultimatum. Since Njeru had given them less land, out of 444 million the exact land that was given, the balance was to be offset as ground rent arrears. Cancellation of the lease between the town council and Njeru occurred hence leaving the ministry to sort themselves with the landlords which did not go well. This was after the landlords being Ham Mukasa’s family sued them for failure to pay ground rent arrears. This though discussed did not happen. This land was also being fought between Ham Mukasa, Ham Kasekedde and Nanteza. However she lost the battle to the other two.
Dr.Charles Lagu, ED National Animal Genetics Resource Centre and data bank (NAGRIC) yesterday implicated mayor Buikwe Paul Musoke, town physical planner Sofia Meme and other politicians in theft of their land. This Njeru stock farm land is located in Buikwe town council and 500-1000 were stolen. Meme during her testimony denied this allegation and said that her land was located far away from the farm. When asked on the relationship between the town clerk and mayor she replied, “the town clerk and mayor had blood. They once fought in the corridors infront of us.” She advised the government to have proper documentation and also fence off their land. “I feel sorry cos they have no proper documentation now and that is a lot of money government has lost.” She went ahead to say that this will protect government land through prevention of encroachers. Also the land can easily be rented out, leased or subleased. Registration of whoever is found on the land should be done for easy rent collection.
