Kampala City Council Authority operates or is supposed to be governed under the Kampala City Council Authority Act.
This law was enacted in 2011 and was later amended in 2019 and subsequently again amended in 2022. Now it is the KCCA Act of 2022 as amended.
There are still imperfections in this law as has been consistently pointed out by various actors. However, this is the law that governs KCCA.
If what was provided in the law was what was being followed, I believe that much of the squabbling at City Hall would be minimized. Going beyond and outside of what the current law provides is what is causing all that friction.
The only solution to this is certainly to again amend or repeal the law.
With current differing interpretations of the law and its implementation being done by the actors in order to suit their already convinced positions is a cause for problems in KCCA and this has adversely affected the service delivery in the City at every stage.
If the leaders in the country were to be interested in seeing an organized, functioning, clean and progressive city, it wouldn't take government much to remove the bottlenecks both to the lack of adequate funding, deployment of requisite competent human resource and the removal of any political impediment to the execution of the mandate and aspirations of a modern city.
For example if the real impediment to Kampala's progress as a modern city is the politics of opposition that seem to have engulfed the city and at each election cycle for the political leadership of the city which ends up offering a Lord Mayor from the opposition, then the onus thing for us to do in order to move forward is to abolish the political election of a Lord Mayor.
We should simply return to what we used to have in the past where the City Mayors were directly appointed by the President based on their merit and public standing.
It would be tantamounting to practicing deceitfulness if we continue to be locked up in a practice that is not offering the Ugandans the desired aspirations for the progress of the country.
As we all know, Kampala City is the heart and face of Uganda. Whatever goes on here certainly has several ripple effects for not only the other cities but for the whole country.
The state of affairs in Kampala City does affect not only the daily living of those who reside and work in the city, but it does affect in a significant way, the economy of the entire country.
If potential investors and visitors start shunning Uganda on the account of the not impressive experience that they get about our capital city, it becomes obvious that even our desperate national effort to create jobs for the many unemployed of our youths will fall on its face.
We have heard several reports of many particularly small businesses losing out or relocating elsewhere due to the dwindling number of clients who feel the frustration of having to navigate the poor infrastructure in the city in order to access the city businesses.
Besides, we have consistently seen news reports of many city hustlers losing not only all their small merchandise but also sometimes and sadly their lives to the hands of the menacing city law enforcement agency.
All this misery that is mated on these city vendors and their families wouldn't be necessary if the city operations were organized not based on patronage and populism but strictly on the law.
It is a known fact that whoever comes to Kampala city political leadership position, will obviously want to pursue a political line that will sustain and endear him/her to the voters.
So, the argument or narrative of accusing any politician in the city of practicing populism becomes idle talk. In a situation where the contestation for power is based on numbers, any politician will be looking at how to sustain and get more numbers to his/her side.
It is therefore imperative that if we want to diminish this practice of populism in the running of the affairs of our beloved city of Kampala, we should take a bold and political decision of abolishing the electable position of the Lord Mayor.
It is certainly disheartening to see how Kampala city is gradually deteriorating in terms of poor road infrastructure, ever flooding drainage systems, environmental degradation, neausiting daily traffic jams, unmanageable garbage collection and deteriorating hygiene, ever sprouting unplanned slum settlements, pollution, untidiness lawlessness and soaring crime
All these are happening in our city and nothing much practical is being done to address these issues.
Instead, on a daily basis, the technical and political leadership of the city are engulfed in squabbles, blaming each other and trying to square out with each other in a bid to tarnish the other side and gain sympathy and favours for their side.
This doesn't and won't take the city anywhere.
We have already seen where the 20 years of the same has brought us. The city has reached a state of being dysfunctional.
It doesn't matter whichever part of the city you go to these days, things are pathetic. The road potholes have become the hallmark of the city. In the leafy surburbs of Nakasero, Kololo and Muyenga, it is all potholes!
The road potholes are everywhere in the new city surburbs of Ntinda, Najjeera, Seguku, Lungujja, Lukuli, Konge, Bunga and Bugolobi. Road potholes are all over the City Business Area (CBD) and in the Industrial Area where some of the roads even become practically impassable and inaccessible whenever it rains.
Matters of Kampala city become more disheartening when those who regularly travel out of the country to other cities in the region do make comparisons of Kampala city with others like Kigali, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam or Lusaka.
Incidentally, we need to appreciate that even those who want to invest or do business globally do also consider factors of the state of the city before making decisions on where to put their money. Those days of the notion that foreign tourists come to Africa in order to enjoy potholes and dust are over.
