By Stephen Akabway Jr
As the ping pong over the revamping or not of Nakivubo drainage channel continues to unfold, the country’s environment regulator do not have yet straight answers to offer to the perplexed Ugandans.
Dr Akankwatsa Barirega who heads National Environment Regulation Authority (NEMA), has admitted today that as the sector regulators they still lack answers as to whether or not the revamping of Nakivubo drainage channel channel will pose serious environment challenges not capable of being scientifically mitigated.
Akankwatsa made the stern revelations today while he appeared before the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee to school legislators about the potential dangers or of lack them of the looming revamping of Nakivubo drainage channel system.
The Head of State, Gen Yoweri Museveni authorized a renowned private businessman and property developer, Hamis Kiggundu popularly known as Ham, to go ahead and conduct the upgrade of Kampala Capital City’s arguably longest drainage channel system.
Museveni’s authorization was quickly seen by the likes of Kampala Lord Mayor, Ssaalongo Erias Lukwago as a usurpation of the work of the elected leaders of Kampala Capital City and NEMA who are legally mandated to carry out an oversight role over projects like the one Ham was authorized to conduct.
Defiant to the boot, Lukwago has since put down his feet and vowed to fight to his last blood and sweat and block Ham’s pending revamping of the drainage system under contestation.
Gen Museveni bypassed Lukwago’s administration and issued authorization to Ham scared that Lukwago’s group would use politics to block a long overdue and critical development project just as they previously attempted to do so when he initially authorized Ham and he ultimately delivered to Uganda a standard Nakivubo national stadium plus a much improved downtown Nakivubo business hub.
Independent observers are worried that what was an issue of environment conservation viz a viz a development issue has since hijacked and converted into a political issue by two antagonistic politicians bent on proving to the gallery who of the two possesses much power than the other.
As the two political bulls continue to fight each other over a technical matter they do not possess much professional training about, the rest of the country, on the other hand, continue to watch in amazement unaware of when the political fight would end and then the project start or not.
More puzzlingly, NEMA who are mandated to carry out an environment assessment to establish the potential dangers posed by the revamping of Nakivubo drainage channel system, have to date never moved and carried out their stated mandate and therefore seem to be in a deep slumber, giving a license to any Tom, Dick and Harry to comment on a technical matter they lack competence over.
NEMA boss, Dr Akankwatsa speaks in a way that suggests that the institution he heads is at the mercy of a private developer..
Dr Akankwatsa asserts that the private developer should deliver to NEMA his architectural plans first and thereafter NEMA would proceed and sort of conduct their own independent version of an environmental assessment over his potential project works based on his plans.
NEMA says the private developer submitted to them provisional architectural and environment assessment plans and Dr Akankwatsa says they are still waiting for the private developer to submit another set of compressive plans to conduct their own version of environment assessment over the private developer’s intended works.
Be that as it may, a much proactive sector regulator ought to have by now sat down with Ham and shared notes on the mitigation measures each side have in place other than leaving a perplexed population guessing endlessly about the environmental challenges or lack of them potentially posed by the revamping of one of the country’s eco-systems.
Simply put and finally, the nation still demand for the required critical answers from the professional public officials mandated and remunerated handsomely by the tax payers to do so. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
