MBARARA – One month down the road, the newly constructed Mbarara Central Market remains closed due to corruption, even though the process for the fresh allocation of space kicked off Tuesday.
The market which was handed over to Mbarara City authorities last month was supposed to be officially reoccupied by vendors on April 11, 2022, but this has not happened.
Allegations of corruption forced local government minister Rapheal Magyezi to halt the allocation of lock-ups and stalls in the facility.
The minister stopped the allocation exercise in response to the cries of market vendors that did not get space allocated to them, accusing their leaders of allocating space to tycoons, yet the government redeveloped facility to benefit low income-earners.
Minister Magyezi would later suspend the market leadership, asking the Mbarara Resident City Commissioner, Lt Col. James Mwesigye to take on matters arising from the mismanaged allocation of space in the market.
Mwesigye on Tuesday urged the new allocation committee to exercise maximum transparency while considering low-income earners to get stalls.
“We are going to find out vendors who have been temporarily operating from Independence Park and they are the ones that we are going to register,” Mwesigye said.
He however said the conflict between the purported landlords and vendors in the meat business came about as the market leadership manipulated the list of the vendors that were to be allocated space.
“We have realised a conflict in vendors dealing in meat, a reason why we have not registered them. And the problem is that those who have been working in those stalls are not the ones who are identified and for us we are looking at a vendor [a poor person] who has to benefit from a government facility and we are going to sort them out,” Mwesigye explained.
“Formally they were only writing landlords yet the new market is for the vendors but for us we were able to separate them. However, the truth is, there are no landlords in the central market. The landlord of the central market is the government and council,” he added.
Emmanuel Muhumuza, the acting central market chairman pledged to resettle all vendors in their new market.
“We will make sure that everybody settles in this new market. We made a communication yesterday alerting every vendor to be on his working place and nobody should be left out of this exercise because we don’t want messes that have been happening before,” Muhumuza said.
“Whoever is registered on this list belongs to this market. However the matter of meat dealers is a complex issue but they should remain calm and after we have finished the first phase, we are going to sort them because for them you find one stall being claimed by over 10 vendors where some of them call themselves landlords which is not the case,” he added.
He reminded the purported landlords that they have a memorandum of understanding with the government and that they should remain calm.
“We want to tell the so called landlords to stay calm because they made an agreement with government and after settling all vendors who are currently operating from Independence Park, we shall then come to the issue of landlords,” Muhumuza said
Stephen Nimusima, the alleged landlord and Chairperson of Mbarara Central Market Meat and livestock dealers says they set up the structures housing the butchery and spent 5.6 million shillings to construct them, thus arguing that they are the rightful people to be registered and not the tenants.
MP Mpaka unhappy with Magyezi
However, Mwine Mpaka, MP representing Mbarara City South Division was unhappy with minister Magyezi who, the legislator said never consulted them as the area’s political leaders, while trying to resolve issues of the market.
“Mbarara central market has so many challenges, first of all minister Magyezi took decisions without consulting us because we are the stakeholders and have a big stake in this market,” Mpaka said.
“Secondly, we held a meeting in Kampala and agreed that people who will occupy the market will be vendors who are currently carrying out their business from independence park but later alone the allocations’ committee did contrary which means that our input was ignored,” he said.
Mpaka said he would table the issue of Mbarara central market before parliament on Thursday.
“We held a meeting and by the close of this week if we finish the national budget allocations most likely on Thursday, as area MPs we shall present a petition to the flow of parliament.” Under normal circumstances, such issues would be forwarded to my committee of trade, tourism and industry but I have interests. So if the speaker allows our committee to investigate, I will have to step aside and the vice chairperson takes over such that he presents the report based on what he will find on ground,” he explained.
Don’t think it is only Mbarara market but all city markets have issues so we shall make investigations and debate on it as a national matter but not Mbarara alone, Mpaka said.
“Of course, the minister will be given a chance to give his defence on the flow of parliament and the debate committee will also come and they debate them together and at the end, we will come up with recommendations,” Mpaka said.
He appealed to vendors to stay calm as the central government takes on the matter.
Vincent paddy, a political activist in Mbarara accused city leaders of corruption, saying they must do away with the vice.
“I want to assure you that vendors don’t have any stalls there because vendors who reallocated to Independence Park are there and the fully-fledged market structure is also there so where is the problem? The problem is only corruption,” Paddy said.
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